


out along the edges

by boasamishipper



Series: and i think it's gonna be a long, long time [1]
Category: Captain Marvel (2019), Top Gun (1986)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Amnesia, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Captain Marvel (2019) Spoilers, Cats, Emotional Manipulation, Established Relationship, First Kiss, Flashbacks, Flying, Gaslighting, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Male Friendship, Memory Loss, Mild Sexual Content, Motorcycles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-29
Updated: 2019-07-29
Packaged: 2020-06-22 07:53:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 41,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19663033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boasamishipper/pseuds/boasamishipper
Summary: Chell dreams of flying, most nights.There’s never a destination, nor any explanation for how he’d gotten up there in the first place. It’s just him, zooming through the air, clouds and blue sky stretching out as far as the eye can see. Sometimes there’s sound — snatches of voices he doesn’t know, jargon he doesn’t understand — but most of the time it’s quiet, and he relishes in the feeling of his stomach swooping, adrenaline thrumming through his veins, all of his nerve endings alight with the sensation of freedom.He doesn’t know why. Technically, he shouldn’t be having dreams at all: the Collective created tabs several years ago that provide every Kree man, woman, and child with a restful night’s sleep, but he never takes them. They make his brain feel fuzzy, like it doesn’t belong to him. And no matter what his doctors tell him, he can’t shake the feeling that these dreams have something to do with his past —  the past that he hasn’t been able to remember since the accident. So he holds onto the dreams, hoarding them (and the elation they bring) like jewels, hard and sharp beneath his skin.Maybe someday he’ll understand what they mean.--The Captain Marvel AU of Top Gun.





	1. i.

**Author's Note:**

> A playlist for this fic is available at https://open.spotify.com/playlist/280T6ltUuY74p5fB9ZKOx8.

Chell dreams of flying, most nights.

There’s never a destination, nor any explanation for how he’d gotten up there in the first place. It’s just him, zooming through the air, clouds and blue sky stretching out as far as the eye can see. Sometimes there’s sound — snatches of voices he doesn’t know, jargon he doesn’t understand — but most of the time it’s quiet, and he relishes in the feeling of his stomach swooping, adrenaline thrumming through his veins, all of his nerve endings alight with the sensation of freedom.

He doesn’t know why. Technically, he shouldn’t be having dreams at all: the Collective created tabs several years ago that provide every Kree man, woman, and child with a restful night’s sleep, but he never takes them. They make his brain feel fuzzy, like it doesn’t belong to him. And no matter what his doctors tell him, he can’t shake the feeling that these dreams have something to do with his past — the past that he hasn’t been able to remember since the accident. So he holds onto the dreams, hoarding them (and the elation they bring) like jewels, hard and sharp beneath his skin.

Maybe someday he’ll understand what they mean.

* * *

“Get up.”

“The view’s much nicer from down here,” Chell says, but he jumps back to his feet anyway, getting himself back into position. “Maybe you ought to see it for yourself.” He lunges forward and grabs Yon-Rogg’s arm, intending to throw the man over his hip and send him sprawling onto the ground to see how he likes it, but Yon-Rogg twists out of the grip easily. He hooks a leg under Chell’s knee and yanks, and then Chell is on the ground again. “Damn it!”

“Patience yields focus,” Yon-Rogg says, but the severity is belied by the amused smile he’s wearing. “You’ll get there eventually.”

Chell gets back up, breathing heavily. They’ve been at this for the last two hours, ever since he’d woken up with his heart pounding and the words _jetwash_ and _flat spin_ echoing in his head and hadn’t wanted to be alone any longer. The adrenaline rush that fighting gives him is almost comparable to the one flying gives him in his dreams, but he’s gotten his ass kicked too many times in a row for him to really enjoy it. “The comeback,” he says, “starts today.”

Yon-Rogg strikes first, attempting to land a front kick, and Chell counters, shifting his momentum as he rotates his body out of reach. As Yon-Rogg adds a second kick to the combination, Chell brings his arm down in a chopping motion to block the attack, somehow managing to spin his opponent around so that his back is facing him. 

Chell has one arm around Yon-Rogg’s throat when the other man throws his head backwards and cracks him in the chin. He curses and his hand automatically goes up to soothe the smarting pain in his jaw, and a second later Yon-Rogg has escaped his grip and gotten the upper hand again. “So,” he says casually, like they’ve just run into each other in the hyperrail station. “Tell me about this dream. Anything new?”

“No,” Chell grinds out. It’s hard to speak when he’s halfway on his knees and Yon-Rogg’s got his arm pinned so tightly behind his back that one wrong move could dislocate his shoulder. “Nothing new.”

“You’ve got to let go of your past.”

Chell manages to escape the pin, and barely dodges Yon-Rogg’s next punch in time. “I don't remember my past.”

“It’s causing you doubt,” Yon-Rogg says. It’s a conversation they’ve had about a thousand times before, and Chell really wishes that Yon-Rogg would save it for another time. “And doubt makes you vulnerable.” He punctuates this remark with a sweeping kick that knocks Chell off his feet _again,_ stars damn it, and Chell’s aggravation reaches its boiling point. He lunges off the ground, light flaring from his clenched fists, but Yon-Rogg grabs him hard by the forearm, cutting off the attack before it can even begin. “Control it.”

It takes more effort than he’d prefer, but his hand eventually returns to normal. Six starsdamned years and he still doesn’t have full control over his powers — another side effect of the accident that he can’t remember. No other Kree has abilities like him, which earns him admiration in some circles and scorn in others. Still, he wonders what the point of having these powers is if he barely gets to use them and is reprimanded when he does. “Sorry,” he mutters, even if he doesn’t mean it.

Yon-Rogg does not look impressed. “There is nothing more dangerous to a warrior than emotion, Chell,” he says. He’s not that much older than Chell but sounds like he’s been around since the dawn of time. “You need to learn how to control yourself — otherwise the Supreme Intelligence will have no choice but to send you to reconditioning.”

Reconditioning is a punishment reserved for the worst of the worst, and even if he doesn’t know all the details — nor does he care to — it’s enough of a threat to make him apologize genuinely. “So.” Chell rises once more and crosses his arms over his chest, a smirk playing on his lips. “One more round? I won’t go easy on you this time.”

Yon-Rogg’s just opened his mouth to reply when Chell jumps him, hoping that the element of surprise will aid him this time around. They both land on the ground, Chell getting to a mounted position as he keeps Yon-Rogg on his knees. That lasts for less than a second before Yon-Rogg twists, moving himself down to break Chell’s grip. Chell holds on hard, but in two quick moves, Yon-Rogg squirms free, flipping Chell over the top of him as he moves in for the takedown, but Chell moves away just in time.

They circle each other for a moment, trading easily deflected kicks and punches. Then Chell charges again, going low and sweeping Yon-Rogg’s legs out from under him. The momentum sends them both crashing to the ground again, and Yon-Rogg hurls himself on top of Chell, pins him down hard, and Chell curses. _Son of a bitch._

Yon-Rogg smirks. “Good work,” he says. “Let me know when you’re ready to stop going easy on me.”

Chell blasts him into the wall, and doesn’t even feel bad afterwards.

* * *

The hyperrail cuts through the heart of Hala, blue and orange lights from the billboards flickering through the windows. A cool voice informs everyone in the carriage — about fifteen Kree, mostly men and women on their way to work — that it has been a hundred and twenty days since the last Skrull attack. Star Force hadn’t even had to deal with the Skrull that time; the Supreme Intelligence had blown the enemy ship out of the sky before it had even reached the outskirts of the city. 

Chell clears his throat. Yon-Rogg, who’s reading the latest news report on a nearby holopad, gives a grunt of acknowledgment but doesn’t look up. “So,” he says. “Who do you see when you commune with the Supreme Intelligence?”

A couple of the people standing nearby give Chell dirty looks, but the Star Force uniform he’s wearing prevents them from telling him off. Each Kree chooses the way that the Supreme Intelligence appears to them — it has to do with the mechanics of the subconscious, or so says the Collective. It’s sacred, personal. Certainly not something to discuss in a crowded hyperrail carriage, but Yon-Rogg doesn’t even twitch. “I’m not telling you, Chell.”

“Your father,” Chell guesses, ignoring the dismissal. “Your old commander?” 

“No.”

Chell leans back in his seat. “I get it,” he says smugly. “It’s me you see, isn’t it? That’s why you don't want to tell me.”

The corner of his mouth twitches. “No,” he says. “It’s not you.” He glances over at Chell. “Nervous about your meeting?”

Chell ducks his head to hide his blush. He’s a Kree soldier, an operative of Star Force. He’s not supposed to be nervous — even if he is meeting with the leader of the Kree Empire for the first time and has no idea what to expect. “No,” he says unconvincingly. “I mean, I know how to use my powers. I’m ready to enter the field. Nothing to be nervous about.”

Part of Chell had hoped Yon-Rogg would reassure him, but that’s not the other man’s style. Yon-Rogg just makes a noncommittal noise, once more engrossed in the report, and the rest of the hyperrail ride passes in silence.

* * *

The Kree-Lar Headquarters — the home of the Supreme Intelligence — is the largest building in the city, made from golden metal that gleams in the early morning sun. His Star Force uniform gets him immediate service, and less than five minutes later Chell is directed into a windowless room with golden walls and pillars wider toward the top and narrow toward the bottom. The floor has a hexagon that’s pulsing with white light, and a cool voice instructs him to kneel on it, keep his arms relaxed at his sides and his eyes closed.

When he opens his eyes again, the room around him has changed. The walls are gone, replaced by endless white nothingness, and the floor that he’s kneeling on is neither warm nor cold, but simply there; a flat, blank something on which to be. He feels fine, if slightly perturbed. _Am I supposed to say something to let it know I’m here?_

“Rise.”

Chell rises. Keeps his head down.

“Good,” says the Supreme Intelligence. Its voice is neither male nor female, just matter of fact. “State your name.”

“My name is Chell, Intelligence.”

“Chell,” the Supreme Intelligence repeats, like it’s tasting the name on its tongue. “Meet my eyes, Chell.”

Chell raises his head. In front of him stands a man with spiky graying hair, sharp brown eyes and a neat mustache over his upper lip. He wears a similar Star Force uniform to Yon-Rogg, one that signifies he is of a high rank, and Chell automatically stands at attention, his arms at his sides. “Intelligence,” he says.

The Supreme Intelligence nods. “Chell,” it says. “Your commander insists that you’re fit to serve.”

He stands up even straighter, pushes all nerves and tension out of his mind. “I am.”

“Your commander also reports that you have trouble with authority,” says the Intelligence, not unkindly. “That you prefer trusting your instincts over orders — and that your past fuels these instincts of yours.”

He flushes. Stars. How much had Yon-Rogg told the Supreme Intelligence? Does it know about his dreams? Chell opens his mouth to say something — though he’s not sure what — when the Intelligence raises its hand, and a floating image of a blue and green planet appears, one that he’s never seen before. The image then turns into a variety of planets, different colors and sizes and shapes. Whole galaxies.

“You were just one victim of the Skrull expansion that has threatened our civilization for centuries,” the Intelligence continues. Its mouth twists into a sneer. “Imposters who silently infiltrate and then take over our planets, destroying civilizations from the inside.”

Several images appear around him, like they’ve been plucked straight from the front page of the news reports that Yon-Rogg likes to read. The smoking ruins of a city in the Nova Empire. The remains of a black market weapons distribution center. Alien children screaming, covered in blood. A Skrull snarling, teeth bared, pointing a weapon directly at Chell, whose fists automatically clench in anticipation of a fight.

“Horrors which you remember,” the Intelligence says. “And so much which you do not.”

It’s not a question, but Chell feels compelled to answer anyway. “It’s all…blank. My life,” he adds. “You’re supposed to take the form of who I most admire, but I don't even…I don't even remember who this person was to me.”

“Perhaps this is a mercy, then,” the Intelligence replies. “Sparing you from a deeper pain, and freeing you to do what all Kree must. You were given a great gift; a chance to fight for the good of all Kree.”

Light flares from his fists. “I want to serve.”

“Then master yourself,” says the Intelligence. It’s so much like Yon-Rogg’s stern _Control it_ that Chell feels the sharp sting of embarrassment, and the light vanishes just as quickly as it had appeared. “Control your impulses, Chell. Stop using this,” the Supreme Intelligence points to Chell’s chest, above his heart, “and start using this.” It gestures toward Chell’s head. “In order to succeed, you must be the best version of yourself.”

He has no idea how he’ll accomplish that, but he’s determined to try. “I won’t let you down.”

“We’ll know soon enough,” says the Supreme Intelligence. Neither praise nor condemnation, but Chell takes it. “Your powers give you the potential to turn the tides of war in our favor. Serve well and with honor. We will speak again soon.”

Before Chell can respond, the world around him shifts, and suddenly he’s back in the windowless room in the Kree-Lar. Wires unwind from his arms and legs, sliding back into the glowing hexagon he’s kneeling on. He feels exhausted, but pleasantly so, as if he’d worked hard at some extremely enjoyable task.

 _Your powers give you the potential to turn the tides of war in our favor,_ he thinks, unable to keep himself from grinning. _Won’t Yon-Rogg get a kick out of that._

* * *

That evening finds Chell in the main hangar with the others, awaiting Yon-Rogg’s arrival so they can depart on their mission. Korath, as Yon-Rogg’s second in command, is filling them in on the details he’d gleaned from the report, but Chell’s not paying as much attention as he should. The lack of sleep from the night before is starting to catch up to him, and he can’t get his encounter with the Supreme Intelligence out of his mind. Who had that man been to him? A friend? A mentor? He’d been wearing a Star Force uniform, yet why does Chell get the feeling that he had never been in Star Force at all?

“Chell, are you even listening?”

Chell’s head snaps up, and he musters up a sheepish grin. “Sorry,” he says, and Korath grunts like he doesn’t care either way. “Didn’t get much sleep last night.”

Minn-Erva smirks at him. “Finally found someone willing to get into bed with you?”

It’s a better excuse than strange dreams that he doesn’t understand, and he goes along with it, sending her a wink. “Could be you next time if you play your cards right, Minn-Erva.”

“Not even if you paid me, Chell.”

“Eh, worth a shot.” Chell shrugs. Att-Lass, who’s tinkering with the rifle on his lap, exchanges an amused look with Bron-Char, and Minn-Erva rolls her eyes. They’re all well used to his antics by now. “What about you, Korath? I’ve always had a thing for men who could break me in half.”

Korath does not look amused. “You think you’re funny, Chell?”

“I think I’m hilarious.”

“Well, I’m not laughing.”

“You never laugh,” Att-Lass says dismissively.

“I laugh,” Korath says. “On the inside. And I’m not doing it now.”

Yon-Rogg takes that as his cue to enter the hangar, and they all make an effort to straighten up and look presentable, like they hadn’t just been joking around for the last five minutes. “Alright, team,” he says. He touches the communicator built into the wrist of his uniform and projects a holographic map and a pixelated photograph of a man that Chell doesn’t recognize. They all move closer to see. “Prepare for the search and rescue of one of our spies, Soh-Larr. The Skrull have invaded yet another border planet, this time Torfa.” His upper lip curls in disgust. “Soh-Larr sent a warning signal, which we’ve intercepted, that his cover has been blown. The Skrull General Talos has sent kill units to find him. Should they reach him before we do, the intelligence he has acquired over three years is as good as theirs.”

Minn-Erva raises her hand, and Yon-Rogg nods at her. “How many units are being deployed?”

“Just ours,” says Yon-Rogg. “The Accusers will bomb a Skrull stronghold here in the south.” He taps a point on the map, which glows slightly. “We will slip in, locate Soh-Larr and get out, leaving them none the wiser. The Torfan populace; we are not to interfere with them nor them with us. Nothing compromises the security of our mission. Proceed with caution. Follow protocol before extracting him.”

The holograph disappears, leaving the team standing in a circle.

“This is a dangerous mission.” Yon-Rogg scans each of them, as if sizing up whether they had the fortitude to complete the mission. Chell keeps his expression schooled and his head held up high. “We must all be ready to join our brethren in the stars if that is our fate today.” He clenches his right hand and taps it twice over his heart. “For the good of all Kree!”

Chell, Bron-Char, Korath, Minn-Erva and Att-Lass do the same. “For the good of all Kree!”

* * *

They arrive on Torfa with a splash: literally, by diving down from their ship into the Daxam Sea, which is far too cold for Chell’s liking. Yon-Rogg gathers them altogether once they’re back on dry land, his expression as serious as sin. “Att-Lass, Minn-Erva, find elevation,” he orders. “Bron-Char, Korath, Chell, you’re with me. Chell, track Soh-Larr’s beacon; they must have hidden him nearby.”

Separating proves to be a problem almost immediately. Their comms don't work well in Torfa’s atmosphere, so whatever Minn-Erva’s reporting back to Yon-Rogg about the Torfan locals comes out garbled and staticky. Still, if there is a problem, Minn-Erva can take it down with her eyes shut and one hand tied behind her back, and Att-Lass can shoot the dust off a Skrull’s boots from a mile away, so Chell’s not that worried.

“Report, Chell.”

Chell looks down at his tracker, which is flashing silver every few seconds. “His beacon’s coming from that temple,” he says to Yon-Rogg. “Let’s move.”

“No,” Yon-Rogg says, and Bron-Char, Korath and Chell all look up at once. “This is the perfect spot for an ambush. Only one way in, one way out.”

“Not to mention we have to pass the locals,” Bron-Char adds. 

“We don't know if they are truly locals,” Korath says, since being a pessimist is his main function on this team. “It’s too risky.”

Chell tries to tamper down his irritation, but this is ridiculous. They shouldn’t be wasting time talking themselves in circles like this. “You don't have to go with me; I’ll go alone.”

“No, you won’t.” Yon-Rogg looks around, assessing his surroundings, but the distant sounds of weapons firing leads him to make a snap decision. “Come on.”

By the time they return to Minn-Erva and Att-Lass’s position, the once-quiet area has transformed into a warzone. Green blaster bolts and purple lightning flash through the sky, illuminating the dozens of Skrull that are charging directly at them. Yon-Rogg immediately begins firing as well, and Korath gives a mighty yell and charges into the fray. Bron-Char runs to Att-Lass’s aid, and upon helping his best friend off the ground, the two of them exchange grins before shooting as many Skrull as they can. Bodies hit the ground — none of his fellow soldiers, thank the stars — and Chell almost chokes on the acrid stench of blood and smoke in the air.

Still, he doesn’t let his temporary discomfort keep him from doing his job. He fires off a few shots with his standard-issue pistol, his heart soaring with glee when he takes down a Skrull woman who had been charging at Yon-Rogg, who gives him a brief smile as thanks. He’s debating going over to Korath, who seems like he’ll be overwhelmed at any moment, and helping the older man out when the tracker buzzes in his hand. Soh-Larr’s beacon is getting fainter, and Chell knows that the Skrull will want to move Soh-Larr as far away from the commotion as possible so Star Force can't rescue him.He’s got to get Soh-Larr, otherwise this whole starsdamned mission will have been for nothing.

Before Chell can change his mind, he turns on his heel and sprints back in the direction of the temple. He can hear Yon-Rogg screaming bloody murder at him, but he figures that it’ll all be worth it when he brings Soh-Larr back with him. Maybe then he’ll have proved himself worthy of Star Force, and of Yon-Rogg himself.

The temple is more charred, crumbling rock and ashes than an actual building, and Chell ventures inside carefully, his pistol and powers at the ready. Out of the corner of his eye, he notices movement from behind one of the massive pillars, and the communicator on Chell's wrist lights up with the code. “HGX-78?” he ventures.

“TRT79-VVX6,” answers the man, who moves further into the light, clutching one of the remaining railings for balance. He’s got blue skin like Minn-Erva and a beard bushy enough to put Bron-Char’s to shame. Soh-Larr, the undercover operative. “Are you Star Force?”

“Yeah,” Chell says. Thank the stars. He holsters his pistol and moves over to help Soh-Larr sit down. “You alright?”

“Better now that you’re here,” says Soh-Larr. He’s smiling like he’s just told the universe’s best joke, and Chell doesn’t understand why until Soh-Larr suddenly pulls out a weapon from the folds of his tunic and jabs it into the side of Chell’s neck.

Chell feels as if he’s been struck by lightning. Everything flashes white and red and flies apart, as if the cave itself had exploded, and searing pain erupts from every part of his body at once: his face, his hands, even his toes. When the fiery pain finally subsides and his eyes regain their focus, Soh-Larr’s face swims blearily above him...except it’s not Soh-Larr. It’s not a Kree at all; it’s a Skrull. Talos.

Through dry lips and an even drier mouth, he forces out the only question he can think of: “How…did you know…the code?”

Talos moves closer until he’s looming directly over Chell. “How about I tell you my secret,” he says, “when you tell me yours?”

Waves of purple-tinged electricity course through Chell’s body once more, and everything goes dark.

* * *

**Let’s open him up.**

* * *

There are planes lined up on the tarmac, arranged in a U shape, their metal bodies gleaming brightly in the afternoon sun. A swarm of young men in forest-green jumpsuits head toward them, their heads held high, exchanging good-natured jeers and laughs with one another that are barely audible under the roar of engines in the sky. Chell’s not sure how he got here, but it’s a nice view, and he’s content to spend the next few minutes standing there.

“So,” says a voice from next to him, and he startles at the realization that he’s not alone. Beside him is a taller man, also dressed in a forest-green jumpsuit. His blond hair is tousled slightly by the breeze, and his eyes are hidden behind mirrored glasses, but his stance is relaxed as he watches the pilots heading toward their jets. A smirk plays on his lips. “Who do you think is gonna take it?”

 _Take what?_ he wants to ask, but what comes out instead is, “Bronco and Burbank.”

“Bullshit they will. They’re behind by two points.”

“Still plenty of time for them to catch up.” Chell shrugs, sends the man beside him a smirk of his own — even if what he’d really wanted to do was scream _what the fuck is happening_ at the top of his lungs. He feels like a spirit has possessed his body and it’s unnerving in the worst way. All he can do is watch. “Besides, I’ve always had a thing for a come-from-behind finish.”

“I bet.”

“Oh, fuck off.”

 **This can’t be right,** says a voice, and Chell would have jumped a foot in the air if he’d had any control of his body. The blond man is talking again but it sounds muted, like it’s coming from underwater. His surroundings are blurring, warping. **Go back further.**

Suddenly the scene changes. He’s no longer outside, he’s indoors, and he’s much smaller, much younger. He’s hiding behind a table, watching a thin woman with long brown hair standing in front of a half-open door, a patch of sunlight streaming into the hall and illuminating the strange patterns on the rug.

“It’s with my deepest apologies—”

“No.” The woman sounds like she’s choking, and her hands fly to cover her mouth. Chell inches closer, desperate to see what the matter is — and if he can do anything to ease whatever pain she feels. “No, no, please—”

“—that we regret to inform you—”

“No, stop it, _stop it—”_

 **Who is this person?** the voice asks, sounding bemused. **Are we in the right place?**

The man at the door is still speaking to the woman, who’s shaking her head so fervently that her hair is coming loose from her bun. She tries to slam the door shut, but the man moves forward, catching her around the shoulders as she falls, sobs wracking her body before she even hits the floor. Chell finds himself moving forward, tears coming to his eyes as well, saying, “Mom? Mom, what’s going on?”

**No, this isn’t right. We went back too far — go forward, go forward again.**

He’s just reached this woman when the world around him tilts, and he’s older again, no longer a child. The room he’s in is packed to the corners with people — there’s music playing from a primitive-looking glowing machine, nearly drowned out by the sounds of glasses clinking together and snippets of conversation. He’s perched on a stool at the counter, laughing with a tall man with blond hair and a skinny mustache, smiling so hard that it kind of hurts, elation swooping through him because he’s made a _friend,_ he hasn’t had a real friend so long—

**No, that’s not it.**

He’s standing ramrod straight, at attention, his eyes forward and his hands at his sides. Someone’s at his side, and he wants to look over and see who it is — if it’s anyone he’s seen before — but all he can do is stare straight ahead at the bald man that’s yelling at him. “For five weeks, you’re going to fly against the best fighter pilots in the world. You were number two, Cougar was number one. Cougar lost it, turned in his wings; now you guys are number one.”

 _Flying?_ Chell’s heart leaps. _Did he say flying?_

“But you remember one thing.” The man gets right in Chell’s face, so close that the acrid stench of cigar smoke and sweat makes him flinch. “You screw up — just _this much_ — and you’ll be flying a cargo plane full of rubber dog shit out of Hong Kong!”

He keeps his chin up, says, “Yes sir!”

**No, not — follow this thread, see where it takes you.**

A different room, a different crowd. Everyone’s in white uniforms, including him, and he’s got a microphone gripped tightly in his sweaty hand as he sways back and forth. “You never close your eyes, anymore,” he sings, and it’s breathy and out of tune and awful, _stars,_ why is he doing this? “When I kiss your lips…”

“There’s no tenderness like before,” sings someone from behind him, swaying in line with Chell and snapping his fingers rhythmically. Not much better than Chell, but at least this man can stay on key. “In your fingertips…”

The woman in front of him — who must be the target of this strange serenade — tucks a wayward strand of blonde hair behind her ears, averts her eyes; the smile tugging at her mouth is more surprised and amused than interested. But he wants to impress her, and he’s not about to give up now.

“You’re trying hard not to show it…”

**Am I the only one that’s confused here?**

The world gets smaller, constricts on him. He’s lost control, he jerks at the controls but nothing’s working, he’s falling, terror is rising in the back of his throat like bile because stars help him nothing is working and he’s _falling._ “Goose,” somehow he sounds even more terrified than he feels, “you have to punch us out; Goose, I can’t reach the ejection handle!”

The canopy pops off, and he’s sent flying. The air has been punched from his lungs and it prevents him from screaming, but he can still feel the wind whipping around him, his chest pounding from terror and guilt and _please no, please no, not him, not him—_

He lands in the water surprisingly gently, and Chell’s heart sinks into the pit of his stomach when another man lands next to him a few moments later. “No,” he pleads, grabbing the man by the back of his soaking wet jumpsuit, yanking him out of the green-tinged water with all the remaining strength he possesses. The man’s face is still, streaked with blood. He’s lifeless, and Chell feels himself break. “No, Goose. Jesus, please, no…”

 **This isn’t what we came for,** the voice suddenly declares, and Chell is profoundly grateful for the interruption. **Change it. Now.**

It’s quiet in this room, dark except for the fuzzy white light emanating from the television set. He’s standing up, and in front of him is the same blond man from earlier, the one who’d teased him on the tarmac, but there’s no bantering this time. They’re just hovering in each other’s space, silent, not touching. Each waiting for the other to make the first move.

Then the man reaches out and touches Chell’s face — the softest, most reverent touch, like Chell is something precious, and the sheer intimacy of it all makes his heart stutter. He doesn’t dare breathe, doesn’t dare look away. In this moment, he doesn’t even know what he is hoping for.

“You know,” the man finally says. His voice is barely audible over the thudding of Chell’s chest, the thunder of his pulse. His eyes, now that they’re not hidden by the sunglasses, are a striking blue. “Doing this…it’s a risk. It’s dangerous.”

“Hey.” Chell tries for a smile. “I am dangerous.”

The man releases a quiet, exasperated laugh, but Chell would have to be blind to miss the fondness behind it. “Yeah,” he says, “yeah, I know you are,” and then he leans down and kisses him.

And Chell — Chell can do nothing but respond in earnest, lets himself melt into the kiss and be pulled close, feeling like he could rise out of his body and float away into the clouds. The kiss deepens, and he feels like the breath is being stolen from his lungs, but he doesn’t care, not as long as he keeps being held like this.

 **Interesting,** says the voice. **That’s interesting.**

 _No,_ Chell thinks from the other side of time and memory with surprising vehemence, _no, you can’t see this, it’s private, it’s mine, get out, get out, get OUT—_

He jerks backwards, and suddenly he’s outside again, leaning against the side of an airplane hangar. A tabby cat approaches him, rubbing against his leg, and he kneels down beside her and runs a hand down her back.

“Chewie likes you.” Chell’s head jerks up, and his heart misses a beat at the sight of the man before him. Spiky graying hair, sharp brown eyes, a neat mustache: this is the man that the Supreme Intelligence had taken the form of. “She doesn’t typically take to people.”

“Guess I’m just special like that, sir.” Chell gets back to his feet, even if what he really wants to do is ask a million questions, namely _who the hell are you_ and _how do I know you_ and _why are you the person I admire the most._ “Early start to your morning.”

“Late night, actually,” the man corrects. He’s wearing a forest-green jacket with strange patches sewn into it, and he looks far more relaxed than he had in their last conversation. That is if the Supreme Intelligence merely wearing his face counted as a conversation. “I can’t sleep when there’s work to be done. Sound familiar?”

Chell grins. “Flying never feels like work, sir.”

They both look out across the tarmac at the same, watching the planes take off and land, the roar of the engines inexplicably soothing and adrenaline-inducing all at once. “Hell of a view, isn’t it?”

Chell nods up at the sky, where the planes are now flying in formation. Routine drills, he thinks, even if he’s not sure how he knows that. “I prefer the view from up there.”

The man laughs. “You and me both, kid,” he says, reaching out to clap Chell on the shoulder before he turns away.

**Wait, wait, wait. That’s him. Get him back.**

“Hell of a view, isn’t it?”

Chell frowns. Hadn’t they just had this conversation? “I prefer the view from up there,” he says, and somehow some of the confusion he’s feeling has seeped its way into his tone.

The man laughs, claps him on the shoulder. “You and me both, kid.”

**What’s that on his jacket? I couldn’t read it.**

“You and me both, kid,” the man says again, and this time Chell’s eyes go to his jacket, unbidden. There’s another patch sewn just above his heart, a patch with words on it — not Kreeglyphs, but somehow familiar nonetheless.

 **Commander Mike Metcalf, Viper,** says the voice, echoing Chell’s own thoughts. **Yes, that’s him. Do we have the location?**

A flash of blue light, and then the world around him changes again. He’s on the ground, dust and ash sprinkling from the sky like rain, and everything hurts. The man from a few moments ago is kneeling next to him, weapon pointed at the Skrull that’s approaching them, but it’s not right, somehow. Chell knows that much.

 **Go back right before this,** says the voice. **Go back.**

The Skrull fires the weapon, but the blaster bolt never lands. He’s in the cockpit of a plane again, hurtling through a sky that’s more inky black than blue, and things aren’t quite as dire as they were in that other memory but they’re getting pretty damn close. “Trust me, sir,” he says, though to whom he doesn’t know, “I’ve seen MiGs, and that’s no MiG.”

 **This is it,** says the voice, and for the first time it seems to be directed at Chell. **Now let me see where you’re headed. Look at the coordinates.**

His eyes move toward the controls, where a set of glowing letters and numbers blur in his line of vision.

**Focus.**

_No. No, I won’t, you can’t make me._ He wills himself to shut his eyes, and is surprised beyond belief when that actually works.

 **Open, please,** the voice orders, and his eyes open at once, staring at the swirling mess of digits without taking anything in. **That’s it. That’s it, focus. Focus!**

_The hell I will._

With all of the strength he possesses, Chell tears his eyes away from the controls and yanks at a lever. Seconds later he’s sent flying through the air, wind whistling in his ears, and the voice’s aggravated curse seems to reverberate in the air around him. **Get him back. Get him back now!**

* * *

Everything is a blur, slowly solidifying into shapes. Into people. His head is throbbing like someone spent the last several hours using it for target practice, and the world is tilted. Is it supposed to be tilted? He doesn’t think it should be. 

Chell forces himself to concentrate on his surroundings. He’s not on Torfa anymore, that’s for sure. In fact, he’s pretty sure he’s not even planetside at all; the steely gray walls and slightly stale air indicate that he’s on a warship. His legs are chained above his head — he’s upside down, restrained by some primitive contraption with metal encased over his hands. And he’s in Skrull custody.

Yon-Rogg is going to kill him.

“Do we have _any_ information we can act on?” That’s the voice that had been in his head, the voice that had followed him through all of those strange visions, and Chell finally is able to pin it down. That’s General Talos, one of the leaders of the Skrull army — the Skrull who had simmed Soh-Larr and kidnapped Chell. He’s pacing near the screens, his entire body tense like he’s completely exhausted his patience. “Well?!”

“Just that Metcalf was somewhere on the planet C-53,” says another Skrull standing near the console — though he stands well out of Talos’s way. “We’re on our way.”

“Then dig, dig, dig deeper! Metcalf is our link to that lightspeed engine!” He exhales raggedly, and it might be the blood rushing to Chell’s head, but Talos actually looks vulnerable for a moment. “And everything we’re after.”

A Skrull comes closer to Chell, who shuts his eyes tightly and pretends he’s still unconscious. Concentrating hard, he lets his hands go alight with energy, burning through the metal encasing bit by bit—

The Skrull touches him, and it takes a truly enormous amount of effort to stay completely still. He can’t catch diseases if they touch him, can he? They didn’t cover that in Star Force training.

“I think that did something,” Talos says, sounding surprised. Chell wonders what exactly it had done. “Try that again?”

The Skrull taps Chell on the forehead twice more, and Chell’s eyes pop open. His metal restraints are beginning to glow orange, burning so brightly that the air around them has warped with heat.

“Uh oh,” says the Skrull, and _uh oh_ is exactly the right sentiment, because Chell chooses that precise moment to tear himself free from the restraints, landing on the floor with a thud that sends vibrations running up his legs.

He charges at the first Skrull, kicking her legs out from under her and slamming his metal-encased hand down hard on her forehead. Two more come at him after that, howling a battle cry, and he knocks them out in quick succession, adrenaline thrumming through his veins.

On the outskirts of his world, he sees the Skrull next to Talos raise their weapon, but Talos brings his hand down over their forearm before they can pull the trigger. “Not yet!”

Chell isn’t about to let this situation progress to _yet._ He lunges forward, punching the trigger-happy Skrull hard in the face, and then slams Talos so hard against the console that whatever had been on the screens flickers out completely. “What did you do to me?”

Even with his life on the line Talos speaks like he’s trying to calm down a spooked animal. “We’re just after a little information, that’s all.”

The planes. Singing in a bar. Cradling a lifeless man in his arms. A woman crumpling to the floor, sobbing. _You and me both, kid._ Blond hair, striking blue eyes hidden beneath mirrored sunglasses. A kiss in a dark room, a fond laugh. _Yeah, I know you are._

Chell grits his teeth together so hard that his jaw twinges in pain, and the light pulsing through the metal around his fists flares even hotter. _“What did you put in my head?”_

“Nothing!” Talos lets out a reedy groan when Chell adds more pressure to the chokehold. “Nothing…that wasn’t already there.”

That takes him aback, so much so that he hopes his confusion doesn’t show in his expression. “But those aren’t my memories.” _They can’t be._

“Yeah, it’s like a bad trip in there, isn’t it? I’m not surprised you can’t keep it straight.” Talos smirks up at him, but there’s something else there, something hidden beneath the contempt and fear. Something almost like pity. “They really did a number on you.”

“I don’t have time for your mind games,” he snaps, even though his mind has snagged on _they really did a number on you_ like a piece of cloth in a barbed wire fence. “What do you want?”

To his surprise, Talos doesn’t evade the question. “We’re looking for the location of a Commander Mike Metcalf and his lightspeed engine.”

 _What the hell kind of a trick is this?_ “I don’t know any Commander Metcalf.”

Talos cocks his head to the side. “Then why,” he asks, “is he in your head?”

Chell does not have an answer for that. Luckily the Skrull racing through the open doors provide a worthy distraction, and he grabs Talos around the waist and throws him at the Skrull, knocking three of them down in one move. He shoves another hard enough that she goes flying into the wall, and then he takes off down the hall.

Two corridors later, he runs into trouble. There’s a pack of Skrull running at him from one direction and another group blocking off his exit. Chell raises his fists at them and fires a photon blast — but it doesn’t work. The metal’s blocking all the energy from escaping. He’s going to have to do this on his own.

He charges at the first Skrull and punches her in the chest, sending her flying into another one. One of them’s got an electric spear, a larger version of the one that Talos used to knock him out, and Chell side steps it before grabbing it out of their hand, turning it around and jabbing it into their throat. He’s pretty pleased with himself until a fist crashes into the side of his head, knocking him to the ground and the weapon out of his hand. Still, all those training sessions with Yon-Rogg have given him the ability to bounce back quickly, and he pounces on the Skrull in question, clapping both hands hard against her ears, and she collapses with a scream.

Chell ducks as another Skrull swings a foot at his side, catching him in the ribs but not too hard. He jumps out of the way of their next kick and grabs one of their arms, twisting it violently behind their back, and then brings his hand down hard on the side of their neck. The next Skrull leaps at him, howling a war cry, but Chell grabs him out of the air and throws him to the ground so hard that he can hear the Skrull’s back break. Then it’s just one against one, and Chell’s senses must have gotten sharper over the course of the fight because he can see every one of the Skrull’s punches coming. Chell strikes him in the face, and the blow lands so hard that it spins his head sideways, and when Chell kicks his legs out from under him, the Skrull lands right on the abandoned electric spear and doesn’t move again.

With all of the enemy defeated, Chell knows his next move is to get the hell out of there. He takes off at a sprint, but he must have gone in the wrong direction because he ends up back in the same room as before. Talos is gone now, but there are three Skrull warriors there, each of whom have about a foot and sixty pounds on him. The first slams an electric spear down on him, which he hastily blocks with his metal-encased fist, but the other two use his temporary distraction as an opening to bring their own spears down on his back, and he collapses to the ground.

He fires, but nothing’s working — _come on_ — and fires again — _come on!_ — the metal’s getting hot enough to burst — _come, come on, stars damn it, come on—_

The metal flies off his hands in an explosion so bright it nearly blinds him, and the three Skrull go sailing into the wall. Grinning, Chell jumps to his feet and whirls around to face the half dozen Skrull that have just entered. “Come on!” he says. “Come at me, you green fucks!”

To his surprise, they don't take him up on the offer; instead, they take one look at him and grab hold of each other and the metal columns built into the floor. Chell has no idea why — he’s a skilled fighter but he’s not _that_ frightening, right? Or is this some kind of trick too?

There’s a crackling, scraping sound from behind him, and then all of the air is sucked out of the room — literally, as the wall had broken (probably from the force of the restraints slamming into it). The lack of gravity sends Chell and the Skrull hurtling backwards, and Chell manages to grab onto one of the columns just in time.

The room is collapsing around him, and debris and Skrull are flying everywhere, and the only door remaining is too far away from him to reach. But Chell has no plans to die today — not after everything he’s been through — so he lets the energy course through his hands and pushes off the column, sailing across the room and through the door, which slams shut behind him. Thank the stars. That had been a close one.

He darts across the hall, and luck must finally be on his side again because this one has all of the escape pods in it. Two Skrull soldiers rush into pods and escape, and Chell grabs a third by the collar and throws him out on his back. It’s not that different of a model from a Kree escape pod, even if the language is different. He’s just about to turn on autopilot mode when the lever in question explodes, and Chell whirls around to see Talos standing there, casual as can be. “Leaving so soon?” he says. “We’re just getting to know each other.”

Chell sends a blast right back at him, and presses another button to shut the doors and start the engine. Forget the autopilot. He’ll fly this thing himself.

The force of takeoff slams his head into the back of the chair, and as the pod goes speeding down through a tunnel and out of a ship, Chell lets out a whoop of joy. This is amazing, and terrifying, and _exhilarating,_ even better than the adrenaline rush that flying gave him in his dreams. He steers the pod away from the ship, most of which is on fire from Chell’s earlier stunt, and towards the planet. He has no idea if it’s enemy territory or not, but the sooner he gets back to the ground and communicates with his team the better.

The second Chell enters the planet’s atmosphere he realizes he’s made a deadly mistake. This is no Kree escape pod that can withstand all kinds of weather and leaps into hyperspace and winds going thousands of miles per hour; this is a Skrull escape pod, and a badly damaged one to boot. Sparks jump across the dashboard, rendering the controls useless, and nothing he does can change his trajectory or make the pod slow down. Cracks fissure through the walls of the pod, and before he can make any effort to stop it, the walls and the floor disintegrate. He’s speeding through the sky on the flaming remains of a Skrull escape pod, the wind whistling in his ears loudly enough to hurt, and _please stars don't let me die like this, don't let me die—_

His head slams against something solid, and for the second time that day, everything goes dark.


	2. ii.

_He’s dreaming. He knows he’s dreaming, because everything he sees is soft at the edges, undulating like he’s looking at the world through a pool of water. But he’s warm, and he’s comfortable, and for now he can put his concerns aside._

_There’s a man standing in front of him. His hair is slightly mussed, like someone had just run their hands through it, and he’s smiling, his whole face lit up with it. They’re standing so close together that Chell can feel his heart beating. Can feel both of their hearts beating, in sync with one another._

_“I know you,” Chell says._

_The man nods. He traces the edge of Chell’s jaw carefully, gently, like he’s memorizing the feel of him. And Chell’s not supposed to feel cold in dreams, he knows that, but when the man retracts his hand, Chell feels like the man had taken all of the warmth in the world with him._

_“Who are you?” His voice echoes in the quiet, sending ripples through the stillness. “Please. Tell me who you are. I want to remember you.”_

_The man laughs, quiet and fond, just like before — was there a before? — and then he’s disappearing, fading away into gray smoke and nothingness._

_Chell reaches for him, desperately trying to find something to cling to, to keep, but he’s slipping through Chell’s fingers. “No,” he pleads. “No, no, wait, come back, don't leave me, don't—”_

* * *

Chell wakes up, and immediately wishes he hadn’t.

A wave of pain consumes his entire body, pulsating through his muscles all the way down to his bones. He tries to sit up, but he loses his balance and lurches sideways, steadying himself on a nearby shelf with a white-knuckled grip. Bad idea, bad idea. He’s got to take it easy.

He breathes through the pain and blinks slowly, trying to bring his surroundings into focus. The lights are flickering and hanging from the ceiling at various angles. There are shelves built into the floor around him, their contents strewn across the floor. Some kind of store, then. There’s a hole in the ceiling above him: he’d fallen through the roof. That would definitely explain the headache, and the dust all over his uniform.

Another wave of pain hits him hard as he forces himself upright, so intense that his vision blurs and the world spins dizzily around him. But he’s determined not to pass out again, and he locks his knees together to keep himself standing. Eventually the world rights itself, and he starts moving forward. He’s got to get out of here and contact Star Force. Yon-Rogg must be shitting bricks by now.

He fumbles with his communicator. “Chell to Star Force Command,” he says, and he’s surprised to hear his voice come out mostly steady. “Do you copy?”

No response. Damn it. His communicator must be on the fritz, but there’s no supplies around here to fix it. In fact, the only items on the remaining shelves are strange rectangular boxes with words and pictures printed on them: _The Right Stuff, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Ghostbusters, The Breakfast Club._ Alright then. He’s going to have to ask someone around here for help.

There’s a car parked outside the store, and Chell climbs out of the remains of the window frame, wiping the dust off his shoulders as he goes. He knocks twice on the car window, which rolls down to reveal an older overweight humanoid with a very confused expression and a patch on his jacket that reads Security Officer. “Hi there,” Chell says, putting on his best _I’ve got this completely under control_ smile. “Chell, Kree Star Force. What planet is this?” A few of General Talos’s words come back to him, and he asks, “Is this C-53?”

The security guard stares at him uncomprehendingly.

“Uh, you know. C-53, Terran homeworld?” Admittedly, that’s all he knows about this planet, which Minn-Erva claims is supposed to be a real shithole. “Do you understand me? Is my universal translator working?”

“No,” the security guard says. He swallows hard. “No, I…I can understand you.”

“Oh, good. That’s a relief.” Chell gestures at the man’s jacket. “Are you in charge of security for this district?”

The security guard looks at Chell like he’s never heard a question like that before. “Sort of,” he says. “Um. I think the movie theater has its own guy.”

Chell’s not sure what a movie theater is, but it’s probably not important for the mission at hand. “Can you tell me where I can find communications equipment?”

Without taking his eyes off Chell, the man points out the window to another clump of storefronts across the street. “There’s a…there’s a RadioShack over there.” 

“Thank you.” What would Yon-Rogg do in this situation? “Uh, Star Force thanks you. Your cooperation in this matter is much appreciated.”

“No problem,” the security guard says rather weakly. Chell gives him a salute and walks off.

Twenty minutes later he’s across the street at the RadioShack, which thankfully has better supplies than the store he’d crashed through. Primitive supplies, but supplies nonetheless. He’s not very good at this — Korath’s got fixing things down to a science — but bit by bit, he fashions a new comms charger out of the strange telephone built into a glass booth and attaches a few wires to the communicator attached to his wrist, which immediately flickers to life.

 _“Verify name and operating number,”_ says the communicator in a cool voice.

“Chell, Kree Star Force, GRX-31-600.”

_“Processing completed.”_

“Get me Commander Yon-Rogg, CTC-39.”

_“Please hold. Now reaching out to CTC-39.”_

The communicator hums pleasantly, and Chell figures that until he’s connected to Yon-Rogg he might as well figure out what to say. _Hey, sorry for leaving you in the middle of the battle, but I got screwed over by the Skrull and crash-landed on C-53_ likely will not go over well. Maybe if he’d actually gotten some intelligence out of the whole ordeal Yon-Rogg wouldn’t be as angry with him, but all he’d gotten was an injured body and a mind full of strange visions that he didn’t know how to make sense of. 

He sits down on the ground and closes his eyes. Planes. He remembers planes. Singing in a bar. A woman sobbing like her heart was breaking. Cradling a man’s lifeless body in his arms, his face streaked with red blood and his eyes staring sightlessly up at the sky—

Chell’s eyes shoot open. _Red_ blood? That can’t be right. All Kree men and women have blue blood, not red. He knows that like he knows his own name. And if that man (he'd called him Goose, hadn't he?) had had red blood, then he had to be a Terran — and if he was a Terran, then how the hell had Chell known him?

_What did you put in my head?_

_Nothing that wasn’t already there._

Had Talos been telling the truth? Had those really been his memories? Part of Chell (the part that sounds like Yon-Rogg) insists that it has to be a Skrull trick to lower his defenses, but Chell had threatened Talos’s life, and people typically didn’t lie when their lives were at stake. Not to mention that this Commander Metcalf was the same person that the Supreme Intelligence had taken the form of when Chell had communed with it…

 _And if that’s real,_ whispers a traitorous, hopeful voice in the back of his mind, _then maybe the man who kissed you was real too._

Chell shuts his eyes again, trying to get a clear picture of the man in his mind’s eye. Blond hair, blue eyes. A broad smile, a fond laugh. But his face is a blur, and Chell can’t even remember the sound of his voice. He’s not sure how much of that is due to him hitting his head when he crash-landed on C-53 or if it’s a side effect of the machine, but his frustration and anger and grief over the loss of one of the few things in his life he’s certain about makes him want to scream until his voice gives out.

_“Chell? Verify, CTC-39.”_

Yon-Rogg’s voice startles Chell so badly that he bangs his head hard against the wall behind him. He fumbles with the receiver and shoves it against his ear. “Shit — yes, yeah, it’s me. GRX-31-600. I…is everyone else there? Is everyone okay?”

 _“Yes, everyone's here. It’s good to hear your voice, Chell. We thought we lost you.”_

A grin spreads across his face. “Why, Commander, were you worried about me?”

Chell can practically hear Yon-Rogg rolling his eyes. _“Keep telling yourself that,”_ he says. _“Where are you? Did you find Soh-Larr?”_

“I found Soh-Larr, but it wasn’t him. Not exactly.”

_“What do you mean, not exactly?”_

“General Talos simmed him; even knew his code.”

_“That’s impossible. That code was buried in his unconscious.”_

“The Skrull have this machine that messes with people’s minds, Yon-Rogg. I think it was how they extracted Soh-Larr’s code.” Chell scrubs a hand down his face. “They, uh, they screwed with my head too.”

_“What? Chell, where are you?”_

Oh, he’s fucked now. “I’m on planet C-53,” he says, wincing in preparation for the explosion that is surely to come. “The Skrull are looking for someone named Mike Metcalf.”

Yon-Rogg pauses. _“Who?”_

“He’s…” _He’s who I see when I commune with the Supreme Intelligence,_ Chell wants to say, but something keeps him from saying it out loud. Yon-Rogg wouldn’t do anything untoward with the information, and neither would any of the others, but Chell remembers the pity in Talos’s voice and the way he’d said, _They really did a number on you,_ and thinks that this is something he ought to keep to himself. At least for now. “The Skrull think that he’s cracked the code on light speed tech. I have to get to him before they do, or else they’ll be able to invade new galaxies.”

 _“No,”_ Yon-Rogg snaps. _“You’re not going anywhere; you’ve been caught once already. We’ll be on C-53 in thirty-six hours. Hold your position until we get there, and keep your comms online so that we can contact you.”_

“No, wait, what if they get a hold of Metcalf before—”

The communicator disconnects, and Chell curses. Damn Yon-Rogg and his stupid rules. Still, there’s nothing he can do about them now. Yon-Rogg won’t take kindly to Chell calling him just to voice a complaint about his orders; he’ll have to wait until tomorrow to contact his squadron again.

He tips his head back against the wall, intending to plan what he’s going to say, but he’s asleep before he can even come up with the first sentence.

* * *

Someone’s tapping on the door, but Chell ignores it. He knows he still has a few more minutes before he has to get up and train with the others, and he intends to use them to his advantage. He shifts positions, trying to get comfortable, and frowns. Stars, what is wrong with his bed? It’s almost like—

He shoots up, banging his head hard on the bottom of the telephone apparatus, which sends him right back into a sitting position. Hissing in pain, he rubs at the sore spot as he gets to his feet, exiting the phone booth. The security guard who’d directed him to RadioShack is back, and with him are two men: one with closely-cropped brown hair and mirrored sunglasses, and another, taller man with dark skin and a politely amused smile curving his mouth. “Excuse me, sir,” says the taller man. “Do you know anything about a guy who went through the roof of that Blockbuster across the street last night? Witnesses say he was dressed for laser tag.”

It’s clear that this statement is directed at him, but Chell plays dumb anyway. “Yeah, I think he went that way.”

He tries to walk off, but the man steps in front of him, smoothly cutting off his passage of escape. “Just a second,” he says. “If you don't mind, I’d like to ask you some questions. Maybe give you the 411 on the late night drop-bys.” He reaches into the jacket of his suit and pulls out what Chell assumes is his identification. _Fury, Agent of SHIELD,_ the cardreads, followed by a small picture of the same man, unsmiling. “Can I see some identification, please?”

Chell figures this identification card thing must be a Terran tradition, but it’s one he doesn’t have time for. “Chell, Kree Star Force. Sorry, I’ve got to get going.”

Again he tries to walk away, and again Agent Fury stops him. “Chell,” he repeats, and his name sounds exaggerated and strange on the agent’s tongue. “Star Force?”

“That’s right.”

“How long are you planning to be in town?”

Finally, a question he knows how to answer. “Not too long, couple days at most. I’ll be out of your hair as soon as I track down the Skrull that have infiltrated your planet.”

Agent Fury snorts. “The Skrull?”

Chell stares at him. “Shape-shifting aliens. They can transform into any lifeform down to the DNA?” Neither of these definitions seem to ring any bells for Agent Fury, who just exchanges an amused glance with the man standing next to him. Stars, they didn’t have a clue, did they? No wonder Minn-Erva thought C-53 was a shithole. “You guys have no idea what you’re dealing with, do you.”

Agent Fury puts his hand out, preventing Chell from leaving. “Hang on, hang on,” he says. He’s still smiling like this is all one big joke. “So how do we know that you’re not one of these…shapeshifters?” 

Chell’s patience is now firmly at an end. “Congratulations, Agent Fury, you have _finally_ asked a relevant question.”

Agent Fury’s smile drops. “Oh! Well, congratulations to you, Rocket Man: you’re under arrest.”

The security guard steps forward, presumably to do just that, but a flicker of movement on a nearby rooftop catches Chell’s eye. Is that a _person_ up there? Are they part of Agent Fury’s team or—

A purple blaster bolt comes sailing through the air, and Chell automatically shoves Agent Fury out of the line of fire and against the phone booth, shooting back an energy blast of his own. The rooftop obliterates in a cloud of dust and debris, and Chell takes off at a sprint after the Skrull. 

He chases them down the busy street, up a flight of stairs and toward what looks like a hyperrail platform, but more crowded and not as technologically advanced. A teenage girl wearing a blue dress knocks into Chell, who apologizes automatically before he spots the Skrull in question (wearing the appearance of a woman with sandy blond hair and a pink dress) entering the train. By the time Chell’s done shoving his way through the crowd, the train has already left the platform, but Chell is not about to give up that easily.

He leaps off the platform — much to the shocked gasps and screams of the civilians around him — and grabs onto the back of the train carriage, punching at the window until it shatters. Then he hauls himself over the windowsill, careful to avoid the bits of glass still in the frame, and into the train.

He walks into the first carriage, and all conversation stops. Everyone is staring at him like he’d just fallen out of the sky — which, technically, he had — but he ignores them, keeping an eye out for the Skrull that had shot at him. No one in here looks particularly suspicious; in fact, an old man looks up from the book he’s reading and gives Chell a friendly smile when he passes by. No Skrull in here.

There’s less people in the next carriage, so he takes his time walking through and observing them. There’s a teenage boy humming a tune that he doesn’t know. A couple of men in neon yellow vests and dirty pants. An old woman knitting a scarf. A teenage girl in a blue dress. A mother and her three redheaded children, sitting next to a man who keeps sneaking peeks at his watch and—

Chell stops short.

Slowly, he backtracks toward the teenage girl, who’s sitting by herself and fiddling with the hem of her skirt. She’s got blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail and long dangly earrings the exact same blue of her dress. When she notices Chell standing in front of her, she looks up and offers him a polite smile.

Chell punches her in the face.

The reaction is instantaneous. The mother of three screams, the teenage boy swears, and the teenage girl in the blue dress (the Skrull) grabs onto the pole next to her and uses it to launch herself at Chell, kicking him hard in the chest. He then grabs her by the shoulder and slams her head into the pole, but she bounces back fast, kicking his legs out from under him and sending him crashing to the floor.

Eventually he gets the upper hand again, shoving her hard against the window and punching her over and over again in the face. Hands clamp down on his shoulders, keeping him in place, and the teenage girl uses his temporary distraction as an opportunity to escape. Chell slams his head back as hard as he can, and he hears the telltale crack of cartilage giving way followed by a muffled shriek of pain. He follows this up with an elbow to the gut, which loosens the person’s grip for good. She’d dropped something in her haste to get away, a purple glowing device the size of Chell’s thumb, and Chell picks it up, putting it into the pocket of his uniform before chasing her into the next carriage — and then onto the roof.

If Chell hadn’t spent the better part of two years training with Yon-Rogg, he would’ve gotten thrown off the train and into oncoming traffic. The Skrull — now wearing the form of the man who’d kept checking his watch — exchanges easily blocked punches and kicks with him, even dodging Chell’s photon blasts like it’s nothing. He strikes Chell hard in the diaphragm, and by the time Chell’s done choking for air, he barely has enough time to punch a hole through the roof and jump back into the train — thank the stars he had, too, otherwise he would have been decapitated by the quickly-approaching tunnel.

The Skrull is gone. Chell hopes that means the alien had gotten killed or thrown off the train, but he knows he’s not that lucky. _You evaded me once, asshole, but I’m not going to let you escape a second time._

Chell gets off the train at the next platform and heads down the stairs, ducking into a secluded alley with nothing but cardboard boxes and overflowing trash containers. He sits down on an overturned crate and examines the device that the Skrull had been carrying. It’s not a weapon; in fact, it looks like a data drive. Yon-Rogg uses them in mission briefings all the time.

He slides the data drive into a tab in his communicator, and a pixelated image flickers into view above Chell’s wrist. So this is the man that Chell had once known and had admired enough that the Supreme Intelligence had taken his form. Gray hair, brown eyes, a neat mustache, and a forest-green jacket with strange patches sewn into it. One of them has his name stitched into it: _Commander Mike Metcalf, Viper._

“Viper,” he says, trying the name on for size. For some reason it fits better in his head than Metcalf, and he decides to stick with it. “Where are you, Viper?”

The answer comes to him in the form of another patch. This one is a black circle outlined in red, with white letters proclaiming _United States Navy Fighter Weapons School_ on it. In the very center is a tiny airplane and words larger than the others reading _TOPGUN._

He grins. Jackpot.

* * *

According to the road map Chell had scavenged from a nearby Internet cafe, he’s somewhere in Los Angeles, and TOPGUN (located at Naval Air Station, Miramar) is in San Diego. The map is not very helpful when it comes to finding routes from one location to the other; oddly-numbered roads criss-cross each other all over the state, each one more difficult to follow than the last. Not to mention that by the time he’s finished walking there, Yon-Rogg and the rest of his Star Force squadron will have arrived on C-53 to pick him up and eliminate the Skrull threat themselves — and Chell will never get the opportunity to figure out who Viper is or what his memories mean.

“—please, I need to go to work—”

“Aww, come on, baby, don't be like that. We’re just talking.”

“I don't want to talk to you, please just leave me alone.”

Chell looks up from the map. There’s a woman standing about fifty feet away from him, in front of the clothing store, and in front of her — more like looming in front of her than standing — is a man with greased-back brown hair, an ugly-looking sneer, and a leather jacket with the words _The Don_ emblazoned on the back. He’s completely in her personal space, and she looks terrified.

“Maybe I can convince you to call in sick,” the man — the Don — says with a smirk. “Give you a ride on my motorcycle over here.” He nods at the motorcycle in question, which is parked a few feet behind him. “What do you think?”

“No thank you.”

“Hey, c’mon, don't be like that.” He reaches out to touch her shoulder, and she jerks out of the way, trying to cut past him. He swears and grabs her, forcing her around. “Hey now, hasn’t anyone ever told you it’s rude to leave in the middle of a conversation?”

“I said already that I don't want to talk to you.”

“Then how about a smile? You got a smile for me?”

At this point, Chell has had enough. “Hey,” he snaps. “Leave her alone.”

The man turns around, and upon seeing Chell standing there, he laughs out loud. “Which one of the Power Rangers are you supposed to be?” Chell has no idea what a Power Ranger is, but from the sound of the man’s laugh, it hadn’t been meant as a compliment. The woman is still pressed up against the storefront, and the Don turns away from Chell to face her again. “Scram, kid. This isn’t any of your business.”

“It doesn’t matter whether it’s my business,” Chell retorts, fighting to keep his voice low and his powers to himself. “She doesn’t want anything to do with you. Leave her alone.”

That pulls the Don up short. He steps back slowly and rolls up his sleeves in a manner clearly meant to be intimidating, but Chell’s stared down Skrull terrorists and Yon-Rogg on a bad day and this doesn’t even faze him. “Here’s a proposition for you,” says the Don once he’s less than a foot away from Chell. “You’re going to walk away right now. Forget you were ever here. And in exchange, I won’t rearrange your face for you. How does that sound?”

Chell pretends to consider it. “Nah,” he says lightly. “I think I’ll pass.”

The Don throws a punch at him, but Chell sees it coming a lightyear away and grabs the man’s fist hard, his own hand buzzing with energy. The woman stares at them with wide eyes and her hands over her mouth, and Chell notices that there are more people gathered around them now, but they are mere shadows on the edge of his world.

“Here’s a proposition for you,” says Chell, ignoring that the Don (stars, what a stupid name) is now on his knees and moaning in pain. “You’re going to leave this woman alone. You won’t look at her, talk to her, or get within fifty feet of her ever again. And in exchange, I’ll let you keep your hand.” He pauses. “And I’m also going to need your bike.”

“Here!” The Don reaches into his jacket pocket and grabs a set of keys, holding them out for Chell to take. “Here, here, take ‘em, take the bike, whatever you want. Just let me go!”

Chell releases his hand, and the Don collapses to the ground in a ball, whimpering and clutching his hand to his chest. “What?” he mocks. “No smile?”

He steps over the Don, taking care to kick him in the back while he’s at it, and makes his way over to the woman that the Don had been bothering. “Thank you,” she says tearfully. “God, you’re an _angel;_ thank you so much.”

Chell feels his face go red. “Don’t mention it.” He shifts awkwardly from foot to foot. “Uh...you are okay, though, right? You’ll be okay?”

“Yeah, I think so.” She exhales, brushing a wayward strand of hair behind her ear. “I…well, I’ve got to go to work now, but once my shift ends, can I — can I take you to lunch, or something? I mean, you don't have to,” she hastily adds. “Just…there must be something I can do to repay you for saving me.”

Chell opens his mouth to say that that really isn’t necessary, that he needs to be on his way, but then he gets a closer look at her. She’s wearing a white shirt with a tiny red shopping bag embroidered over the breast: the same red shopping bag that’s in the logo of the clothing store behind her.

“You know,” he says slowly, “I think we can come to an arrangement.”

* * *

There’s something beautiful about riding a motorcycle, Chell thinks. Zooming down empty stretches of road just to feel the wind on your face, lights and sounds blurring as you accelerate past cars and cities, adrenaline singing in your veins. It’s not nearly as exhilarating of a feeling as flying, but it’s close. It’s close.

Three hours of traveling later, Chell pulls up at a bar on the outskirts of San Diego. There’s only a couple of cars parked outside, but the sign over the door says it’s open, so he parks the bike in the first available space he sees and enters.

The door shuts behind him with a jingle, and Chell takes a few seconds to look around. It’s all sleek wooden floors and mahogany tables, with photographs and neon signs decorating every free inch of the walls. There’s a strange glowing machine (a jukebox, his mind supplies) in the corner of the room, playing a soft melody about watching the tide roll away that makes him feel unexpectedly melancholy. All of the tables are empty except one: the one where Agent Fury of SHIELD himself is nursing a tall glass of water.

Fury must feel him staring, because he looks up too. Their eyes meet, and Chell half expects him to make some dramatic speech or try and arrest him for real this time, but the agent just laughs. “Well, I'll be damned,” he says. “Great minds think alike, huh?”

“Guess so,” Chell says cautiously. This already isn’t going to plan, and it’s thrown him off his rhythm. “So. This wasn’t planned?”

“Unfortunately, no,” Fury says. “Complete coincidence. I was tracking a motorcycle thief that matched your description to San Diego, but I lost track of him — or rather you — near Irvine. Decided to stop here for a quick break, and here you are.” He takes a sip of water, gesturing with his other hand at Chell’s white shirt, denim jeans and black leather jacket. “Gotta say, I like this ensemble better than the scuba suit.”

“Thanks.” Chell takes a seat at Fury’s table, eyeing the man with concern. He’d swapped his suit for jeans and a brown sports coat, and there’s a hastily-stitched gash above his left eye. “Had a rough day, Agent Fury?”

Fury chuckles. “It’s been interesting, that’s for sure. Space invasion, big car chase, got to watch an alien autopsy. Typical nine to five.”

Only one part of that really registers. “So you saw one.”

“I did,” Fury says. “Gotta admit, I thought you were pulling a con on me back in Los Angeles—”

“Pulling a con?”

“Sure, you know. A con, a trick. Like Paul Newman in _The Sting?”_ Chell shrugs, and Fury continues anyway. “Point is, I was never one to believe in aliens. But after today, well — I can’t unsee that.”

Huh. Well, he hadn’t been expecting that — though truth be told, Chell hadn’t thought he’d ever see Fury again either. But Fury’s here, and he’d seen a Skrull up close, and he believes Chell. Fury _believes_ him.

 _It could be a trick,_ whispers a voice in the back of his mind that sounds suspiciously like Yon-Rogg. _He could be a Skrull. He could be tricking you into letting your guard down so he can capture you and turn you over to Talos._

Fury reads his mind. “You think I’m one of those green things, don't you.”

Chell shrugs by way of an apology. “Can’t be too careful, you know.”

“Don’t blame you there. But in this case, I promise you are looking at one hundred percent red-blooded Earthman.”

Chell wants to believe him, but he’d believed Talos when he’d simmed Soh-Larr back on Torfa too. “I’m afraid I’m gonna need some proof.”

Fury gives a thoughtful hum. “We talking a cheek swab or urine sample? Because you’re gonna have to wait at least thirty minutes for me to produce the latter.”

“Neither.” Chell tries not to smile. “The DNA would match. But Skrulls can only assume recent memories of their host bodies, so…”

“So you want to get personal,” Fury finishes. He leans back in his chair easily, as though he’s got all the time in the world. “Go on, then. Hit me with your best shot.”

Chell didn’t think he’d get this far, but he’s able to come up with a question pretty quickly anyway. “Where were you born?”

“Huntsville, Alabama,” Fury says promptly. “But technically I don’t remember that part.”

“Name of your first pet?”

“Mister Snoofers.”

Chell snorts. “Mister _what?”_

“Hey, my mother named him, not me.”

Chell comes up with more questions, and Fury answers every one of them easily. He’d joined the Air Force straight out of high school and rose to the rank of colonel. Then he’d become a spy, traveling to too many countries for Chell to keep straight, and SHIELD had recruited him about ten years back. He’s been riding a desk there for the last few years, trying to figure out where the world’s next enemy would be coming from — though he had never thought they’d be coming from above, Fury had added with a laugh.

“Alright,” Fury says once it’s clear that Chell is satisfied. He rubs his hands together, grinning like he’s been waiting for this moment all day. “Your turn. Chell, right? That your first name or your last name?”

Chell frowns. “What’s the difference?”

Fury opens his mouth and closes it. “Never mind,” he decides. “Doesn’t matter. Uh, let’s see. Where were you born?”

“I, uh…” He rubs the back of his neck awkwardly. “I don't know.”

Now it’s Fury’s turn to frown. “Name of your first pet?”

“Never had one. I don’t think.” He can tell that Fury is starting to get uncomfortable, and he hastily makes to explain. “I was in an accident six years ago. Lost all my memories. The whole getting personal thing isn’t going to work for me.”

“Yeah, I can see that.” Fury purses his lips together, clearly thinking hard. “Well, is there any other way you can prove to me you’re not a Skrull?”

Chell considers. “Yeah,” he says, and then he blows up the jukebox.

Fury doesn’t speak again for several seconds. His eyes have gone almost comically wide. “How exactly is that supposed to prove you’re not a Skrull?”

“That was a photon blast.”

“And?”

“And the Skrull can’t do that. Only I can.” Chell extinguishes his hands and leans forward so his elbows rest on the table. “So,” he says. “A full-bird colonel turned spy turned SHIELD agent must have pretty high security clearance.”

“You could say that.”

“I did say that. Would you say that?”

Fury snorts. “Alright,” he concedes. “I can and would say that. Why do you ask? Got someplace top secret you want to go to?”

Chell pulls the map out of the pocket of his jacket, laying it flat on the table, and points to the location he’d circled. “Here,” he says. “I need to go here.”

“Why? What’s at Miramar?”

 _With luck, the answers to my questions._ Chell rises from his chair. “Take me there,” he says, “and I’ll explain on the way.” 

* * *

Chell has to hand it to Fury: he’s pretty sharp, even by the standards of a former spy and a current government agent. The millennia-long war between the Skrull and the Kree is no picnic to explain or understand, but Fury picks it up fast. “So,” he says once Chell’s done talking. “The Skrull are an alien race who infiltrate and overtake alien planets. And you’re a Kree, a race of noble warriors.”

“Heroes,” Chell corrects, mostly out of reflex. “Noble warrior heroes. But yeah, you’ve got it.”

“So what do the Skrull want with this Mike Metcalf?”

Chell sits back in the passenger seat. He wishes that he could have kept the motorcycle, but Fury had convinced him it would easier if they took Fury’s car to Miramar — not to mention that the bike didn’t really belong to him to begin with. “They think he developed a light speed engine at Miramar,” he says. “At TOPGUN.”

“A light speed engine,” Fury repeats, like he's tasting the words on his tongue. “Gotta admit, that’s not the craziest thing I’ve heard today.”

“Yeah, well, it’s still early.”

Fury laughs. “What about you?” he asks. “What do you want?”

The answer comes automatically, borne from years of training. “To stop the Skrull before they become unstoppable.”

“And?” Fury glances over at him, as if expecting him to say more, but Chell stays quiet. The attention makes him slightly uncomfortable, and he breaks eye contact to fiddle with the clasp of the seat belt. “War is a universal language, and I know a rogue soldier when I see one. You’ve got a personal stake in what’s going here, Chell. What do you want?”

 _To know who I am,_ Chell thinks, but settles instead for flashing Fury a grin, all easy charm. “Like I said,” he says. “Just doing my part to help the Kree.”

Fury looks like he wants to press further, but he seems to sense that Chell won’t give him any more answers, so he drops it.

Fifteen minutes later, they’re pulling up into a long, winding driveway and stopping in front of an imposing metal gate. Chell’s so nervous that he can barely sit still. His left leg won’t stop bouncing, and it takes a truly astounding amount of willpower to keep himself from blasting a hole through Fury’s dashboard. Fury rolls down the window and reaches out to push a button on a nearby box.

A staticky voice comes through before Fury can push the button. _“This is a military base; turn your vehicle around.”_

“This is Nicholas Joseph Fury,” Fury says. He’s got to raise his voice to be heard over the roaring of engines in the distance, and Chell’s fingers twitch at the sound. “Agent of SHIELD.”

There’s a pause. _“One moment.”_

“Nicholas Joseph Fury,” Chell repeats, mostly just to break the silence. “You have three names?”

“Everybody calls me Fury.” He says it with the resigned air of a man who has had this conversation a thousand times before. “Not Nicholas, not Joseph, not Nick. Just Fury.”

“Seems a bit harsh.”

Fury shrugs. “Just part of my charm.”

_“You’re cleared for access.”_

The gate in front of them opens with a metallic hiss. Fury says thank you into the box and then drives up into the parking lot, which (surprisingly) is half empty. He pulls into the nearest spot and parks, and he and Chell exit at the same time. 

Chell looks around, drinking everything in: the green of the grass, the cars in the parking lot, the structure of the buildings, the tarmac and hangars in the distance. This is…familiar. He knows this place. He’s been here before.

The doors of the main building open, and out step a group of men wearing beige uniforms and unfriendly expressions. Chell doesn’t recognize any of them, but his hackles go up. Whatever’s about to happen is not going to be good.

“Here.” Fury hands him a pair of mirrored glasses and a gray baseball cap with an eagle stitched on it, and Chell takes them with no small level of bemusement. “Put these on; they’ll make you look like less of a greaser.”

Chell puts on the glasses, but he taps at the logo on the hat. “What’s this?”

“It’s a hat.”

It takes a lot of effort not to roll his eyes. “I know it’s a hat, Fury, what’s _on_ the hat?”

“The SHIELD logo.”

Chell puts the cap on, tightening it so it won’t fall off his head. He sneaks a peek of himself in the side mirror of the car, and has to admit that he looks pretty cool. “You know, somehow I doubt announcing your identity on clothing helps with the covert part of your job.”

“Said the space soldier who was wearing a rubber suit,” Fury retorts, and before Chell can even come up with another comeback, the group of men have stopped directly in front of them. “Afternoon, gentlemen.” Fury reaches into his coat and pulls out his identification card again, which he hands to the first man he sees. “I’m Agent Fury, and this is Agent Smith. We’re looking for a man named Metcalf; a Commander Mike Metcalf.”

The man at the front of the group blanches and then immediately goes red, like a broken traffic light. Two of the men near him exchange worried looks. Chell frowns. Clearly Commander Metcalf is not a popular subject around here. “Do you know him?”

The man hands Fury’s ID back without answering Chell. His expression is ice cold, giving nothing away. “Come with me.”

* * *

“You familiar with the phrase ‘welcome wagon?’”

“No.”

“Well," Fury says, "this ain’t it.”

Chell sighs. The men had led him and Fury into an empty office and told them to wait there for further information, but that had been almost forty minutes ago. Fury’s leaning forward in his chair, his elbows resting on his knees, and Chell leans back against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest. They’re both bored out of their minds.

Fury stands up and walks to the door, tugging fruitlessly at the handle. With a resigned sigh, he pulls a small, sleek black object out of his pocket and starts typing into it. Interested, Chell arches his neck to try and see the device better. “That a communicator?”

“Yep.” Fury pops the p. “State of the art two-way pager.”

“Who’re you paging?”

“My mom. Don't worry, I won’t mention you.”

While Fury alternates between typing on his pager and fiddling with a thin piece of wiry metal the size of Chell’s thumb, Chell examines the building directory that’s lying half-open on the desk. They’re in the administration building, apparently, and the records are located on sub-level two. If there’s any actual information on Mike Metcalf at Miramar, then they’d have to be located there.

Fury makes a triumphant noise, and Chell turns around to see that he’d managed to use that wiry metal to unlock the door. Smart man. “After you,” says Fury with a gallant bow. Chell returns the gesture and heads out the door, Fury right on his heels. “Now, if it were me, we ought to figure out where they keep the records.”

“Way ahead of you,” Chell says. They stop in front of a pair of elevators, and Chell presses the down button. “Sub-level two. Saw it in the building directory.”

“Clever,” Fury says, and he actually sounds like he means it. Weird.

“Thank you.”

The elevator takes them down to sub-level two, which is all cold metal walls and stale air and gleaming linoleum floors. The records room is marked by a door which reads Authorized Personnel Only, and Fury reaches into his pocket. “Need to pick the lock,” he says by way of explanation. “Lemme just get the paperclip in order again and—”

Chell blasts the door open, and Fury’s jaw drops.

“You let me play with a paperclip for ten minutes up there when all you had to do was that?” Fury makes a strange noise with his mouth, imitating the sound of the photon blast. “C’mon, man. I thought we were friends, here.”

“I didn't want to steal your thunder,” Chell says primly, which makes Fury laugh. “Not to mention if I blasted the door open up there it’d send every soldier within fifty miles running to detain us again.”

It’s hard to tell since his skin is so dark, but Chell is pretty sure that Fury’s blushing. “Fair enough,” he concedes. He puts the remains of the paperclip back in his pocket, shaking his head. “Lead on, Macduff.”

The lights come on as they enter the room, revealing rows and rows of shelves groaning under the weight of boxes of files. Everything’s organized alphabetically, and Chell’s heart rate increases once he gets to the Ms. Mavis, McAdams, Metcalf. 

He pulls two boxes off the shelf, handing the first to Fury and balancing the second on his hip. He removes a stack of files from the box, which he then places back on the shelf. The first folder contains a personnel file with basic information: Metcalf, Michael V., Commander, USN, callsign Viper. He knows all of this already, though, and moves onto the next folder, which contains blueprints full of sketches of engines. Jackpot.

“This is Commander Metcalf’s plan for the light-speed engine,” Chell says. He glances through the blueprints, all of which are too complicated for him to make sense of, before noticing that there’s a stamp in the bottom of each one marked TERMINATED. “They terminated the project.”

“I don’t blame them,” Fury says. “Whoever this Metcalf was, he was a few scoops short of a full sundae. Check this out.”

Fury hands Chell a page from a notebook, covered in messy handwriting and drawings. Handwriting and drawings that Chell instantly, inexplicably recognizes. “Kreeglyphs?”

“What?”

Chell grabs the paper from Fury, examining it further. Yes, those are Kreeglyphs. Words jump out at him at random: ‘project’, ‘lightspeed engine’, ‘Skrull’, and ‘Tesseract’. “He’s not crazy,” he says. All of the puzzle pieces are falling into place now. “He’s Kree.”

“Well, he’s dead.”

He feels like Fury had just punched him in the throat. “He’s what?”

“Says here that Metcalf crashed an ASIS aircraft during an unauthorized test flight. Took a pilot down with him too. That’s why the security here is so unfriendly; they’re covering up a billion dollar mistake. Oh, and your light-speed engine is toast.”

Fury shows Chell a black and white photograph of a site of the plane crash. The image is a satellite photo of a flat beach next to a mountain; however, the beach has a track leading up to a circle caused by an explosion. Chell turns over the next photo, which shows the beach from eye level; the sand had been pushed up into large ridges by the explosion, and all the trees and rocks within a hundred foot radius had been decimated. No one could have survived that. “When did this crash happen?”

“Six years ago,” Fury says. “1989.”

Six years ago. And if Viper really was Kree, and he had taken a pilot down with him — that’s too many similarities for coincidence. Praying that his voice isn’t shaking, Chell asks, “Who was the pilot?”

“Hmm.” Fury flips through the papers. “Well, most of this thing’s redacted, but there is a testimonial here from someone named Thomas Kazansky. Last person to see them both alive.”

“Kazansky,” Chell repeats. Just saying the name feels like a breath finally released, and he peers at the file for himself. Kazansky, Thomas J., Lieutenant Commander. Why does that name sound so familiar?

“Chell. _Chell._ Hey, you alright?”

Chell startles. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

Fury doesn’t look convinced, but he doesn’t push the issue. Instead, he holds up his pager and gives an almost apologetic shrug. “Gotta take this. You mind?”

“Uh, no. Go ahead.”

Fury claps him on the shoulder and heads out of the records room and into the hall. Chell stares at the name for a few more seconds without really taking anything in, and then he flips the page. He can figure out the whole Kazansky thing later.

True to Fury’s word, the testimonial and crash report is heavily redacted, and largely useless. He’s ready to throw the damn thing aside out of sheer frustration when he suddenly notices a photograph stapled to the back of the folder. A photograph of Mike Metcalf shaking hands with a couple of serious-looking officials, and a pilot climbing into the cockpit of a plane in the background. A pilot with Chell’s face. His past self.

* * *

_“Chell? Verify, CTC—”_

“GRX-31-600. Listen, Yon-Rogg, I know Metcalf was Kree. He was here on C-53 and was killed in a plane crash.” Chell breathes out, trying to calm himself down. His hands are shaking; if he’s not careful he’ll blow up his communicator and the telephone he borrowed. “Do you know anything about this?”

Yon-Rogg sighs, as if he’s about to reveal something that he really, really doesn’t want to talk about. _“There’s only so much I’m cleared to tell you, Chell,”_ he says, almost by way of an apology. _“But according to a mission report sent from C-53, this Metcalf was an undercover Kree operative named Mar-Vell. He was working on a unique energy core, experimenting with technology that apparently could help us win the war.”_

Chell’s grip on the phone tightens. “Did it…” He clears his throat. “Did the report say anything about me?”

 _“Anything about_ you?” Yon-Rogg repeats incredulously. _“No, of course not. Why would it?”_

Chell debates evading the question, but he knows Yon-Rogg won’t give him an answer without getting one in return, so he reluctantly gives in. “Because I found evidence I had a life here.”

A stunned pause. _“On C-53?”_

“I know it sounds crazy, but it’s true.” He swallows hard. “Mar-Vell is...who I see when I commune with the Supreme Intelligence. I knew him. And I knew him as Commander Metcalf.”

_“This sounds like a Skrull simulation, Chell—”_

Anger boils up inside of him, hot and thick. Stars damn it all, what will it take for Yon-Rogg to believe him? “No, it’s not,” he snaps. “Because I _remember._ I remember I was here!”

_“Stop! Remember your training, Chell. Know your enemy. It could be you.”_

He knows he should listen, but he doesn’t want to give up just like that. Not when the answers to all of his life’s questions are so close he can almost taste them. “Yon-Rogg, I have a gut feeling about this—”

 _“Had you heeded proper orders and not your gut feelings, you wouldn’t have ended up in this situation in the first place!”_ Now Yon-Rogg is well and truly pissed off, and Chell’s mouth goes dry. Oh stars, now he’s in for it. _“The Collective and the Accusers have been asking questions, Chell. Questions I don't know how to answer because I don't want to tell them that you made a mistake that cost us valuable intelligence and led the Skrull to that shithole of a planet!”_

Had Yon-Rogg reached through time and space to stab him, it would have hurt less. “I didn’t mean to,” he says, his voice barely steady. “I didn’t mean to do any of that.”

 _“Of course you didn’t. You never mean to do anything; it’s always an accident. You’re always getting yourself in trouble and I always have to bail you out of it, and I’m sick of it.”_ Yon-Rogg gives an irritated sigh, and Chell can physically feel his disappointment through the phone. Stars, how had this all gone so wrong so quickly? _“I found you barely alive six years ago, you know. I brought you to Hala and gave you the blue blood that is running through your veins right now. You would be dead if not for me, Chell, and this is how you repay me?”_

Tears well up in his eyes, and he bites the inside of his cheek hard enough to draw blood in order to keep himself from crying. “I’m sorry.”

_“Your apologies mean nothing to me. What I want is for you to follow orders, to act in a manner befitting a Star Force operative. You will follow orders this time, Chell. Do you understand me?”_

“Please, Yon-Rogg, I—”

_“Do. You. Understand. Me?”_

He ducks his head, letting out a shuddering breath. “Yes.” He forces out the word around the lump in his throat. “Yes, Commander.”

 _“Good.”_ Yon-Rogg seems to be placated by Chell’s use of his rank. A bit of static obscures the line, and Chell has just enough time to release the small, choked sound in his throat and compose himself before Yon-Rogg speaks again. _“We’re nearing the next jump point now; we’ll be on C-53 in twenty-four hours. Leave your beacon on so I can find you when we arrive.”_

“Yes, Commander.”

_“Good. Yon-Rogg out.”_

The line goes dead, and Chell slides down to the floor, his arms on his knees and the heels of his hands digging into his eyes hard enough to hurt. Stars, he’s so _stupid._ What the hell was he thinking, telling Yon-Rogg about this? Maybe it all really is a Skrull simulation, and he’s being taken for a ride just like he always is because he puts too much trust in the wrong things. What kind of a Star Force operative is he, anyway?

After a while of just sitting there and trying not to cry, he notices that something is digging uncomfortably into his stomach, and he pulls back to see what the problem is. It’s the folder from the records room, the one with the redacted crash report and the picture of him and Viper, and Chell’s resolve suddenly hardens.

He _knows_ it was him in that photo, just like he knows that Viper and the man the Supreme Intelligence had taken the form of are one and the same. He had had a life on C-53, for however brief a time, and the memories that Talos had uncovered are evidence of that. He’ll prove it to Yon-Rogg one way or another.

Chell tucks the file back under his jacket and stands up, heading back into the stairwell. Fury had never come back to the records room, so he’s probably on another floor talking with whoever it was that had paged him.

Voices are echoing from further up the stairs, and Chell presses himself flat against the wall to prevent anyone from seeing him. 

“—that Fury’s colluding with the target.”

“Then why did he call us in?”

“Look, rookie, all I know is that we take him in too. Dead or alive.”

“Dead or alive?” the second person asks, sounding nervous, but the two of them disappear through the doors leading to sub-level one before the first person can answer.

Chell feels like the entire world has turned upside down in a matter of seconds. Had Fury — no, Fury couldn’t have betrayed him. If he had, then those people (probably SHIELD agents) wouldn’t have been talking about Fury colluding with the target. And they’d said they had to take Fury in dead or alive, which means Fury’s in trouble.

Without even stopping to think about it, Chell sprints back into the records room. Just in time, too, because Fury’s sprawled on the floor with his arms protecting his face, and there’s a shorter man with thinning gray hair and glasses holding a gun on him. One look at the smirk on his face, and Chell knows this man is a Skrull.

Without hesitation, he shoots a photon blast directly at Fury’s assailant, sending him flying backwards and smashing into one of the shelves. Chell runs to Fury’s side, yanking him to his feet. “You alright?” he demands. Fury nods; the fight had caused the cut above his eye to split open again, but he seems okay. “Grab onto me.”

Fury grabs on to him — which under any other circumstances would be funny considering the height difference between them — and Chell blasts a hole into the ceiling. Then, concentrating hard, he summons all of the energy he has and blasts it at the ground, sending him and Fury through the hole and into the sub-level above them.

Once they’re up there, they take off at a sprint. Chell’s dying to ask what in the world Fury was thinking calling in SHIELD, but they don't have time for that now. They need to get the hell out of this building, and the hell out of Miramar too. Fury yanks him around a corner, and then they’re back on the stairwell again. But this time they’re not alone: there’s another man standing directly above them with his gun drawn. The same man that Fury had brought with him to the RadioShack that morning.

Chell’s hands light up in preparation of a fight, but oddly enough, it doesn’t occur. The agent lowers his weapon, and a voice comes echoing from another level. “Hey, rookie, you have eyes on them?”

“No,” the man says. “They’re not down here.” He gestures for them to go, and neither Chell nor Fury hesitate to take him up on his suggestion.

Less than a minute later they’re back on the ground floor, which is mercifully empty, and then they’re outside in the parking lot. Fury throws the door of his car open, nearly falling over himself in his haste to get in, and Chell gets in the passenger seat so fast that he bangs his head on the ceiling.

Fury veers out of the parking lot with a screech of tires on asphalt, leading them back to the metal gates. Chell rolls down the window and heaves himself over the sill, grabbing onto the roof for balance. With his available hand, he blasts at the metal gates over and over again until they explode, and Fury drives through them. 

It isn’t until Fury merges onto CA-52 and starts muttering to himself about where the hell they’re going to go that Chell remembers something. “Take the next exit,” he says. Fury glances over at him, clearly confused, but Chell doesn’t have time for questions. “Take the next exit, Fury!”

Fury cuts through two lanes of traffic full of honking vehicles to take the next exit, which takes them onto I-805. At Chell’s instruction, Fury proceeds to take another exit onto Nobel Drive, and then another onto Miramar Road.

Finally, Fury stops in front of a building that’s all brick walls and wide arches and striped flags, surrounded by palm trees and neatly trimmed bushes. The parking lot is mostly empty, and Chell stares at the front door as if he can see right through it to the inside. Wonders if the memory of bright lights and loud music and booths crowded with people in white uniforms is real or not.

“So,” Fury says. “We going in or what?”

They go in. The place is about as empty as the parking lot, and there’s no bright lights or loud music, but there are booths, and he and Fury choose an empty one and sit down in it. Fury leaves for a brief moment to go up to the bar and ask for some ice for his eye, and Chell puts his head against the table, enjoying the coolness of the wood against his face.

Fury comes back with a napkin full of ice cubes and a couple of glasses of water. “Highway robbery, I’m telling you,” he says. “Had to pay six bucks for this shit just because I’m not an officer.”

“Should’ve said you were a government agent.”

“That’d kind of ruin the trying to stay low thing we’ve got going on, don't you think?”

“I thought the whole trying to stay low thing was ruined when you invited your SHIELD friends to Miramar.”

It’s a low blow, and Chell regrets it the second the words leave his mouth. Fury, however, does not react outwardly, though his shoulders have slumped a miniscule amount. “Guess I deserved that one,” he concedes. His voice lowers. “I’m sorry, Chell. My boss asked me to bring you in back in LA; said that he wanted you to help us track down the Skrull and kick them to the curb. I had no idea he was one of them. Really.”

Chell figured that Fury hadn’t had any ill intent, but it’s still nice to hear. “That’s okay,” he says. Fury puts up the napkin full of ice to his eye, and Chell suddenly frowns. “How did you figure out he was a Skrull?”

Fury’s mouth twists. “He called me Nicholas.”

It’s not that funny, really, but Fury sounds so disgruntled by the idea of someone using his first name that Chell laughs out loud. Some of the other people turn to stare at the source of the noise, but they turn back around once they see it’s just him.

While Chell finishes his glass of water, Fury fiddles with his pager, which had apparently gotten damaged in his fight with the Skrull impersonating his boss. “Goddamn it. Come on, come on.” Fury tries typing into it, but the screen flickers and goes dark. “Damn piece of junk.”

As much as Chell finds Fury messing with the pager amusing, there’s a more pressing matter at hand to discuss. He takes the file out of his jacket and hands it over to the man beside him. Watches Fury’s eyebrows go up around the napkin full of ice. “Funny story,” he says. “When I arrived on Hala, near dead, no memory…that was six years ago too.”

Fury catches his drift right away. “So you think you’re the pilot that went down with Commander Metcalf.”

Even if he didn’t think that, it’s the most promising lead on his past he’s found so far, and he’ll chase it across the galaxy if he has to. “I think,” he says instead, “that the last person to see them alive can probably tell us.”

“Thomas Kazansky.”

From the way that the name sends a jolt down his spine, through his heart, Chell knows without tangible proof that it’s important. That this Thomas Kazansky, whoever he is, is important to him somehow. “Right,” he says. His eyes move to the file in Fury’s hand, to the one spot in the testimonial that’s not redacted. “So how do we find him?”

Fury looks down again. “Seems like his address isn’t that far from here. Just have to head south.”

Chell nods, grateful that Fury knows what he’s talking about, but his mind is still stuck on what had happened at Miramar. “That agent,” he finally says. “The one who stopped the others from finding us. What was his name?”

“Coulson,” Fury says. “New guy, just joined up a few months ago. Can’t believe he let us go.” He gives a laugh. “Guess he doesn’t hate me yet.”

Chell can’t believe it either. Had anyone from his Star Force squadron been in Coulson’s shoes, they wouldn’t have hesitated to give away his and Fury’s position and turn them over to the authorities. Hell, Yon-Rogg would have probably shot them on the spot, taken care of business himself. Before he can stop himself, he asks, “Why would he do that?”

Fury glances over at him. “I guess he had a feeling, went with his gut against orders. It’s a really hard thing to do, and it doesn’t always get the best results, but people do that a lot here. That’s what keeps us human.”

Chell has never heard anyone describe following instincts over orders as an actual option before, one that doesn’t necessarily need to be condemned, and it makes his throat close up. “I get in trouble for that,” he admits once he trusts himself to speak again. “A lot.”

Fury laughs. “Somehow that doesn’t surprise me,” he says, nudging him on the arm, and Chell ducks his head to hide his smile. “I mean, you did rescue the guy who sold you out to the Skrull. I’m guessing that’s not standard Kree operating procedure.”

 _If I had a credit for every time I violated that…_ “Well,” he says, “I won’t tell your boss if you don’t tell mine.”

* * *

Back on Hala, the Supreme Intelligence had ensured that along with everything else on their planet, the weather would be perfect. Never too hot, never too cold. San Diego, in comparison, is _stifling:_ they'd only ditched the car ten minutes ago but he’s ready to melt in his leather jacket.

The address from the file leads to a small house at the end of a secluded street. One-level, sturdy, built in a style that Fury calls Mediterranean, with a two-car garage. An open two-car garage, which — from what Chell can see — is meticulously organized, spotless. That figures, he thinks, even if he’s not sure why.

Inside the garage is a man leaning over the hood of a blue car, scrubbing it to a shine. His blond hair is damp with sweat, as is the shirt he's wearing, and the sunlight catches on the odd, arresting angles of his face. He’s gotten into a rhythm, jaw set in concentration, and he’s humming something under his breath as he works.

Chell thinks he would be content to stay on the driveway and watch this man clean the car for the rest of his life, but Fury’s cough startles him out of his reverie, and he clears his throat. “Excuse me,” he says. “I’m looking for Thomas Kazansky.”

All of the air seems to leave the garage at once. The man goes still, so still that he looks like he’s been carved from ice, his grip on the washcloth so tight that his knuckles have gone white.

Slowly, ever so slowly, he looks up. Their eyes meet, his blue on Chell’s green, and Chell gets the impression that this man — Kazansky, for this must be Kazansky — can see right through him, all the way down to his soul. His face goes blank, body slack from shock. The washcloth flutters to the ground, but he makes no move to fetch it.

He swallows hard. Then, in a voice that’s barely audible, so close to crumbling into dust: _“Mav?”_

There’s a strange pressure in his chest, spilling warmth into his whole body and making his throat tight. His lack of an answer seems to be answer enough, and Kazansky’s face falls. Chell’s entire body is screaming for Chell to run to him, take him in his arms, apologize until his voice gives out; to do whatever it takes so Kazansky will never look that devastated because of him again. All he can do is shake his head. “I’m not really who you think I am.”

Kazansky’s eyes flicker over to Fury, like he’s just now noticed that they’re not alone. “Okay,” he finally says. There’s some steel in his voice now, some coolness in his expression. He hides his emotions behind a mask of composure better than Chell ever could. “Then come inside and tell me.”

Chell’s never shied away from a challenge before and he’s certainly not about to start now. “Alright,” he says. “Lead the way.”


	3. iii.

Kazansky’s kitchen is small and neat, sparsely decorated, the marble countertops and linoleum floor shining like they’d just been cleaned that morning. There’s a couple of placemats on the kitchen table, along with a neat stack of manila folders and a few pens, and curled up in a sunny spot next to the sink is an oddly familiar-looking tabby cat.

Fury immediately goes over to the cat, cooing like he’s never seen one before. “Oh my _goodness,”_ he says, his voice taking on a strange intonation as though he’s talking to a child. The cat blinks up at him, pleased by the attention. “Look at you. Just look at you. Aren’t you the cutest little thing? And what’s your name, huh? What’s your name?” Fury examines the tiny silver charm dangling from the cat’s collar. “Chewie, huh? That’s a cool name for a cool cat.”

“Yeah,” Kazansky says, and Chell startles. Somehow he’d forgotten Kazansky was even there. “She’s a good cat. Doesn’t usually take so well to strangers, though.”

“Guess I’m just special like that,” says Fury, and it strikes a chord somewhere deep inside Chell. That phrase, this cat — oh _stars._ This is Viper’s cat, the one from his memory. But what is she doing in Kazansky’s house? “Can you introduce us?”

Kazansky doesn’t take it as an odd request, just nods from where he’s leaning against the counter directly across from Fury. “Chewie, this is…”

“Fury.” Fury actually reaches out to shake Chewie’s paw, and she gives an amused meow. “Agent of SHIELD.”

“Right,” says Kazansky. Chell can’t tell whether that title means anything to him or not. “And…”

He suddenly realizes that Kazansky is waiting for an answer from him, and he tears his eyes away from Fury and the cat. “Chell.”

“Chell,” Kazansky repeats. Their eyes meet for the briefest of seconds before Kazansky looks away again, clearing his throat. “Right. I — can I…get you anything? Tea? Coffee?” He nods at a nearby gleaming silver structure that’s even taller than him. “I’ve got some beer in the fridge…”

Fury glances over at Chell, who shrugs. “Tea would be great, thanks.”

Kazansky reaches into one of the kitchen cabinets above the counter, taking out a red tea kettle and filling it with water from the sink. The motion makes his shirt hitch up a little, exposing a strip of honey-gold skin at his waistband.

Not that Chell is looking.

“So,” Kazansky says once he’s placed the kettle on the stove, sounding marginally more composed. He crosses his arms over his chest. “I’m thinking you owe me one hell of an explanation.”

The way Kazansky talks to him, like he’s implying Chell is somehow responsible for all of this — it really, _really_ pisses him off, but somehow Chell still finds it (and Kazansky himself) incredibly attractive. He swallows to get rid of the sudden dryness in his throat. “It’ll sound crazy.”

“You’re _alive,”_ Kazansky says, quiet but intense, and it’s like they’re the only ones in the world again. “I don’t care how crazy it sounds. Tell me.”

It’s an order, not a request, and he’s not stupid enough to ignore it. He meets Kazansky’s eyes again and explains everything. How he’d woken up six years ago on Hala with no memory. How a Star Force mission gone wrong had landed him in Skrull custody and then on Earth. How he’d met Fury, and the two of them had gone to Miramar to search for information on Mike Metcalf, whom the Skrull were searching for as well.

(He doesn’t, however, mention the bits and pieces of the memories that he does have — flying, and singing in the bar, and Goose’s death, and the man who had kissed him. Familiar though Kazansky might be to him, Chell doesn’t want Kazansky to know about any of that. Not until Chell has figured it out for himself.)

Kazansky stays silent the entire time that Chell speaks. If it weren’t for the fact that he hadn’t broken eye contact once during the explanation, Chell would have thought he hadn’t even been paying attention. At last, he says, “You were in space this whole time?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I was.”

“Jesus.” Kazansky runs a hand through his hair. “And — superpowers? You really have superpowers?”

In answer, Chell holds out his hands, palms up. It takes a little effort, but soon they’re flickering with blue and orange light, and Kazansky’s eyebrows rise so high that they’re in danger of disappearing into his hairline.

“What, you aren’t going to prove it to him by blowing something up?”

Fury sounds so offended that Chell has to laugh. “I figured that setting fire to the kitchen might not be the best course of action.”

“I appreciate the restraint,” Kazansky says. “I just remodeled.”

Chell sticks his hands in the pockets of his jacket, barely remembering to extinguish his powers in time. “It, uh…” He clears his throat. “It looks good.”

“Thank you.” It’s quiet for a few moments, during which Chell is desperately searching for something to say in order to make things less awkward, but Kazansky beats him to the punch. “Were you followed here from Miramar?”

“No,” Fury says. “We lost them at some bar a few miles from the base, and then we ditched the car once we got close to here. Didn’t want to take any chances.”

“I contacted my Star Force squadron when I was there,” Chell says. “They’ll be here within twenty-four hours to help us eliminate the Skrull threat for good.”

“Right,” Kazansky says. “The noble warrior heroes.”

Something about how he says it rubs Chell the wrong way. “What’s your problem, Kazansky?”

He sees the quick rise and fall of Kazansky’s chest, but that’s the only indication that any sort of blow had landed. His expression remains utterly inscrutable. “Nothing,” he says. His voice is cool, but there’s a raw ache of _something_ there that he can’t quite disguise, and it makes Chell flinch. “Nothing that you can help with.”

Fury looks between them for a moment, then clears his throat. “Mind if I use your bathroom, Commander?”

Kazansky nods, but he doesn’t break eye contact with Chell. “End of the hall.”

“Thanks.”

Fury pushes off the counter, heads in the direction Kazansky had specified. When he reaches the doorframe, he looks back and catches Chell’s eye for a split second, as if questioning whether he should stay, but Chell shakes his head. He appreciates the sentiment, but he has a feeling that he can handle whatever Kazansky can throw at him.

He’s sure of that up until thirty seconds later, when the kettle on the stove emits a shrill whistle and he startles so badly that he sends a photon blast straight through the garbage can, which immediately bursts into flames.

“Jesus Christ!”

 _“Shit!_ Shit, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

“Shut up, shut the hell up, it’s fine, just move!”

Kazansky shoves him out of the way and runs into the hall, returning less than five seconds later with a red and white canister the size of a blaster. He pulls at a lever, and white foam sprays out of the tube, dousing the flames completely.

For a moment, all they can do is stare at the smoldering remains of the garbage can, the blackened scorch marks on the linoleum floor. _Stars,_ he’s such an idiot; he’s never been so ashamed or embarrassed in his life.

The tea kettle is still whistling, utterly oblivious to the scene that had just occurred, and Chell kind of wants to blow it up too. Kazansky turns around and takes it off the stove, and the room goes quiet almost instantly.

“Well,” says Kazansky after a near interminable silence. His lips are twitching. “So much for that restraint.”

Chell’s not sure which one of them starts it, only that one second they’re silent and the next they’re both laughing so hard that they can barely keep upright. It’s the most he’s genuinely laughed in a long, long time, and he doesn’t even mind that it’s at his own expense.

“That was great, by the way,” Kazansky says once they’ve pulled themselves together, a smile tugging at his mouth. A real, genuine smile, and stars, Chell is just _gone._ “Very smooth. They didn’t warn you about the dangers of tea kettles in outer space?”

“Nah.” Chell hopes that he sounds less out of breath than he feels. “We had other things to worry about.”

“Like the shapeshifting aliens.”

“Like the Skrull, yeah.”

“Right.” Kazansky’s smile fades, and he drops his eyes, staring at the floor like the answers to his problems are written in the ash. Then, in a voice so quiet that Chell almost misses it completely, says, “You really don’t remember anything, do you.”

Chell swallows. “No,” he says honestly. “I mean, sometimes there are — sometimes I get these…flashes.” _Like flying. And Viper. And the man who kissed me._ “But I can’t tell what’s real and what’s not. If I could just piece together what happened that morning, maybe…” He trails off, releases a shuddering breath. “Maybe it’ll all make sense.”

He’s not expecting an answer, which makes it all the more surprising when Kazansky speaks up. “You came here around dawn,” he says. He speaks slowly, like he’s watching all of this unfold on a holoscreen that Chell can’t see. “You were banging on my door so loud I thought you were going to wake the neighbors. You said that Viper called you because the plane he was working on was almost done, and you asked me to take your morning classes so you could help him out.”

Chell frowns. “My classes?”

“Yeah, we — you and I were instructors there, at TOPGUN. Teaching the top one percent of naval aviators. Do you…remember any of that?” Chell shakes his head, and Kazansky sighs like he hadn’t expected anything different. “Anyway. I said yes, and then you thanked me and left. When I got to base, I stopped by the hangar. Viper looked pretty agitated; he was arguing with you, so I figured that was why.” From the ghost of a smile on Kazansky’s lips, Chell is pretty sure the insult had been affectionate and he takes it as such. “He kept saying he had lives to save, that he would take the plane up himself, but you said if there were lives at risk—”

“I’d fly the plane,” Chell finishes. He has no idea why he’d said that, but it feels right.

Kazansky glances over at him sharply, but whatever he’s searching for he doesn’t find, and he just nods instead. Chell tries not to feel disappointed. “Right. I thought he’d fight you harder about it, but he eventually just laughed, threw his hands in the air. Said, ‘If you insist, kid,’ and then climbed right up after you to be your RIO. He was a good man, Viper. I always liked him.” He gives a rough laugh, but there’s no humor behind it. “Never would’ve guessed he was from another planet, though.”

“Kazansky.” Chell hesitates, unsure of where to go from here. For a second he debates calling him Thomas, or Tom, but neither fits right in his head, like a square peg in a round hole. Maybe he’s got another name (a third name, like Fury) but Chell doesn’t ask. He wants to remember that for himself. “I know this must be hard for you, but—”

“No.” Kazansky shakes his head. He moves closer, staring Chell down, and Chell doesn’t dare move away. “No, you don’t know. This isn’t hard. Hard was losing my friend in a mission so secret that everyone acted like it never happened. Hard was having to arrange your funeral because there wasn’t anyone else around to do it. Hard was every day after, _knowing_ that you had to be out there somewhere because you’ve always been too goddamn stubborn and stupid to die, but no one else would believe me.”

He exhales raggedly, shaking his head again, but his gaze doesn’t leave Chell’s. Chell feels like Kazansky’s eyes are pinning him to the wall, and it takes every ounce of willpower he has to maintain eye contact.

“And now,” he says. Each word deliberately calm, measured. “Now you’re back after six years, and you can shoot energy from your hands and God knows what else, and you expect me to call you — what was it? Chell?” His name sounds wrong the way Kazansky says it, twisted and ugly. Nothing like that other name he’d been called. “Is that really who you are now?”

The question is another challenge, but for once it’s one he cannot rise to. He doesn’t know who he is, or who he ever was beyond pieces of fractured memory. All he knows is that right now he would have given up anything — sleep, money, Kree secrets — to be this Mav that Kazansky had mistaken him for. He wants it with such an intensity that it makes his teeth ache. “I don’t know,” he manages.

Kazansky’s expression is unreadable again. Somehow that just makes everything worse. Then he turns on his heel, walking across the kitchen and back into the hall, where he opens up a closet. Chell can’t see what he’s rummaging around for until he makes a soft noise of accomplishment and comes back with a box in his hands. He sets it down on the counter, slides it toward Chell. “Open it,” he says, and Chell does.

Inside the box is a plethora of random items, and Kazansky walks him through each one. A camera. Some cassette tapes, for music. A pair of mirrored sunglasses. A wristwatch. A set of keys. And a stack of photographs.

Chell lifts the photographs out of the box, handling them cautiously, afraid that they might crumble to dust or burst into flames if he’s not careful. Each one is of him. Him as a child, as a teenager. Him in a white uniform surrounded by other people in white uniforms. Him next to a plane, smirking like he knows exactly how the world is going to end. Him with his arm thrown around a taller blond man with a thin mustache, both of them making funny faces. Him and that same blond man with a woman and a young boy of about three or four.

He had been loved here, he realizes. Had a life, had friends, a family. And he can’t remember any of it. Any of them.

Then he gets to the last photos in the stack, and his breath catches in his chest. These ones are recent, probably taken in the months before the crash that had wiped his memories and landed him on Hala. Each one is of him and Kazansky. The two of them in a bar. On a runway with a plane in the background. In white uniforms, in casual clothing.

But it’s the final one that makes his throat close up for good. They’re sitting in a booth together, probably in the same bar as before. Kazansky’s arm is around his shoulders, pulling him close, and he’s grinning, carefree and open. Chell’s other self is grinning too, but it’s softer, and he’s looking over at Kazansky like he can’t quite believe his own luck.

“You took that one about two weeks before the accident,” Kazansky says quietly. He’d moved closer while Chell had been examining the photographs, and there’s barely a foot of distance between them now. “I had it developed after the funeral.”

The funeral that Kazansky had arranged. But why had he been the one to arrange Chell’s funeral? Why had he kept all of Chell’s belongings tucked away like this? Why — oh.

_Oh._

The realization suddenly hits him like a photon blast to the chest. Kazansky is the man from his memories. The man who had teased him on the tarmac, held him like he was something precious, stole the air from his lungs with his kiss. He had the same blond hair, the same striking blue eyes, the same starsdamned laugh and smile: _stars,_ how had he not figured it out sooner?

Because it hadn’t been Kazansky, he thinks. Not really. Chell had known him by another name back then, not by Thomas or Tom, but by—

By—

Something is being pressed into his hand, and he looks over in surprise, startled out of his epiphany. It’s a piece of metal, burnt almost beyond recognition, and engraved onto it are the words _LCDR Peter Matthew Mit._ The remaining letters are gone, ripped away as if by an explosion.

“That was all they could recover from the accident,” Kazansky says. “All that survived the crash. Or so I thought.”

Chell opens his mouth to say something — though what, he doesn’t know — but then Fury comes back in, talking about the mission and the Skrull, and everything left unsaid between them remains unspoken.

* * *

They stay at Kazansky’s house for dinner that evening. The food’s great, even if Chell doesn’t have much of an appetite, and Fury and Kazansky make an admirable effort at keeping the conversation steady, talking about inconsequential things like the weather, and cats, and Fury and Kazansky’s jobs. (Fury hadn’t asked about the garbage can, and neither Chell nor Kazansky had filled him in.) 

Chell chimes in occasionally, since it’d be awkward if he stayed silent the whole time, but he mostly just listens to Fury and Kazansky and wonders how to bring up his latest revelation. What can he say? Even if Kazansky had kissed him six years ago, there’s no indication that Kazansky still had feelings for him now. And why should he, anyway? Six years is plenty of time for someone to move on, for Kazansky to find someone that could treat him better than Chell ever could.

He’s drawn out of this melodramatic line of thought by the sound of someone knocking on the front door. Kazansky stands up, presumably to answer it, but Chell’s got a bad feeling about this. “Don’t.”

Kazansky’s brows furrow. “It’s probably one of the neighbors.”

“They can transform into anyone.”

That gives Kazansky pause. He searches Chell’s expression, and whatever he finds there must convince him because he sits back down and doesn’t move again.

A few minutes pass in tense silence, and Chell is wondering if it really had been one of Kazansky’s neighbors when a voice says from behind them, “You know, you really ought to let your neighbors in when they knock. You never know when it could be an emergency.”

Chell stands up so fast that he almost overturns the table, his hands instantly alight. Fury had drawn his gun and is now aiming it directly at Talos, who just stares impassively at them. He’s not wearing the body of Fury’s boss now, or of that teenage girl on the train, and Chell doesn’t know why but he’s not about to stand here and play twenty questions with a Skrull.

As if reading Chell’s mind, Talos says, “Hang on a second.” He steps forward, and Chell matches him step for step. “Before you go swinging those jazz hands around, making a mess in your friend’s house — and it’s a lovely home, really—”

“What the hell?” Kazansky’s stepped around the table to join Chell and Fury, his eyes wide. “Who the fuck are you? How did you get into my house?”

“I’d be happy to explain,” Talos says easily, like his life isn’t in danger for every second he speaks to them. “Just don’t kill me. It would…really complicate the situation.”

Fury scoffs. “Yeah, well, I’m about five seconds from complicating that wall with some ugly-ass Skrull brains.”

“I’m sorry I simmed your boss, Agent Fury,” Talos says, and the hell of it is, he actually sounds like he means it. “But now I stand before you as my true self. Without deception.”

Chell raises his eyebrows. Really? “You literally just broke into his house.”

Talos shrugs as if to say _fair enough._ “Okay, that’s a valid point. But I’m sure you understand, I had to take some precautions. I saw you crush twenty of my best soldiers with your hands bound.” He raises his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Look. I just want to talk.”

Chell might not have all of his memories, but he wasn’t born yesterday. “The last time we talked, I ended up hanging from my ankles.”

“That was before I knew who you were. Before I knew what made you different from the others.” Talos takes another step forward, and this time Chell doesn’t make to stop him. “I have an audio recording of your voice, taken from a plane crash six years ago. On a device I believe Terrans call a black box.”

Chell has no idea what that is, but Kazansky evidently does. “That’s a lie,” he snaps. “They told me the black box was destroyed in the crash.”

Talos looks over at Chell and raises his eyebrows — or rather his eye ridges.“He doesn’t get it, does he?” To Kazansky, he says, “Young man, I have a very special ability to get in and out of places without being detected. I assure you, it’s no lie.”

“I suggest you get that patronizing tone out of your voice before I remove it for you,” Kazansky retorts, his voice cold and dangerous. “And if you call me young man again I will drop your green ass like a bad habit.”

Talos seems to take that threat seriously, because his next words come out like he’s soothing a spooked animal. “Okay, I get it. We’re all a little on edge here, and understandably so. But I just need your help decoding some coordinates. If you hear me out, I assure you, it’ll be worth your while.”

Talos had been talking about coordinates when he’d been rifling through Chell’s memories too. And he’s not attacking them; if he wanted to kill them, surely he would have by now. Not to mention Chell is curious as to how them helping Talos will be worth his while…

“Fine,” Chell says at last. “I’ll listen. But if I get any indication that you’re—”

“Stars above!” Talos jumps about a foot in the air. Nonplussed, Chewie moves away from him and goes over to stand by Kazansky. “Tell that beast to stay away from me!”

“The cat?” Chell says incredulously. Chewie meows, and Talos flinches like Chewie had just pulled a knife on him. Fury starts laughing. “You’re not seriously afraid of the cat, are you?”

“That’s not a cat.” Talos has backed away so far that he’s now pressed up against the wall where the garbage can used to be. “That’s a Flerken.”

Kazansky appears completely at a loss. “What the hell is a Flerken?”

“It’s — that! That, that _thing_ is a killing machine!”

Chell’s seen Kazansky’s _are you kidding me_ face several times today, but _are you fucking kidding me,_ its more seldom-seen relative, is now out in full force. “It’s a _cat.”_

Chell bends down to pick up Chewie, who seems to be enjoying all of the chaos, and brandishes her at Talos. “Like I was saying,” he says. “I’ll listen to what you have to say. But if I get any indication that you’re lying, I’ll set this Flerken on you. No mercy.” 

Talos eyes Chewie uneasily — even though the cat isn’t doing anything more intimidating than purring at the moment — before meeting Chell’s gaze with a firm nod. “You’ve got a deal.”

“Good.” Chell hands Chewie over to Kazansky, who takes her with no small level of bemusement. “Now. Let’s hear about that black box.”

* * *

Fifteen minutes later, everything is in place. Talos had gone to fetch a friend of his named Norex, who calls himself Talos’s science guy unironically and is in possession of the data from the black box, and Kazansky offers up his computer so they can all listen to the recording. The file in question takes about a millennia to load, and Chell’s legs are shaking from anticipation.

 _“Punch in the coordinates,”_ says a familiar voice, and both Chell and Kazansky’s heads snap up in recognition. Viper. _“5229, -.47, 8.768, 0.2.”_

 _“Copy that,”_ replies another voice — Chell’s voice, and yet not Chell’s voice. He sounds so much more confident that it’s like it’s not even him at all. Kazansky’s grip on the back of the chair tightens, hie expression almost determinedly composed. _“Got a destination in mind, sir?”_

_“My laboratory.”_

_“Your what? What’re you talking about?”_

There’s a pause, such a long one that Chell wonders if the recording had ended prematurely, but then Viper’s voice is back. _“Oh, shit.”_

 _“Is that — wait, what the hell is that?”_ The voice of Chell’s past self changes so drastically that it catches the current Chell off guard. _“It’s not showing up on my radar.”_

 _“Goddamn it.”_ Viper’s voice is grim. _“We’ve been made.”_

* * *

_He was in the cockpit, and normally that didn’t scare him, but he was hurtling along through a sky more inky black than blue with an aircraft he’d never seen before in his life on his tail and right now fear was the only emotion he was capable of feeling. “Trust me, sir, I’ve seen MiGs, and that’s no MiG! What the hell is that?”_

_“Those are the bad guys. Fly faster, now.”_

_“Yes, sir.” He veered hard to the right, dodging the latest wave of fire, and pushed the plane to speeds that even he considered inadvisable as he turned tail and headed back to Earth. Whoever the pilot of the other aircraft was, they were good, and they stayed right on him. “Jesus! What the hell do they want?”_

_“Me. My work.” Viper cursed, and it was beyond strange to hear the man sound anything but composed. “Goddamn it, I never should have brought you along!”_

_“Well, I’m here now. Let’s show these assholes how it’s done.” It was the same trick he’d done at the USS Layton rescue: he let the aircraft get in closer, and then hit the brakes and let the plane fly right by. At first it seemed like it had worked — the plane flew right by him — but when he started firing, the other plane started firing backwards at him. “Shit! Hold on!”_

_He dodged the first round of gunfire and then the second, but the third round hit the wing of the plane, which burst into flames. He tried to get the plane back in control, but it wouldn’t respond to him — goddamn it, it was Goose all over again, and they were falling, hurtling toward the earth so fast that everything was a fiery blur._

_He reached up and yanked hard at the ejection handle — built specifically so he could reach it — and the canopy popped off, but it didn’t take him or Viper with it._

_“SHIT! Stay with me, sir!”_

_Pulling at the lever so hard that his fingers went numb, he desperately tried to align the plane parallel to the ground even as they were getting dangerously close to the land. His entire life flashed before his eyes, and he gritted his teeth so hard he felt something crack._

_And then they were on the ground, crashing through a forest of trees and leaving an eruption of branches and pines behind them before hurtling across a lake. He must have passed out for at least a second because the next thing he knew they had come to a canted stop on a beach, the plane half-buried in sand. Everything hurt — his hands, his legs, his back — but that didn’t stop him from clambering clumsily out of the cockpit and coming around to Viper. “Viper? Commander Metcalf — sir!”_

_Viper’s head was slumped against his chest, but at the sound of his voice he started stirring. Viper’s eyes blinked blearily up at him, and he could have cried with relief. “Wha’ happened?”_

_“We crashed the plane. Are you okay?” He grabbed Viper’s helmet and wrenched it off his head none-too-gently in his panic, tossing it into the sand behind him. “Oh Jesus. Sir, you’re bleeding. We’ve got to get you to base hospital, you’re—” And then he stopped in his tracks. He must have been seeing things, because this couldn’t be possible. “Is your…is your blood…blue?”_

_“Never mind that,” Viper grunted. “Help me out.” He automatically extended his hand and Viper took it, pulling himself out of the plane. His legs gave out from under him after a couple of steps, and he collapsed on the sand. “I have to — I have to destroy it before they get here.”_

_He took off his helmet and tossed it to the side before he leaned over Viper, trying to help him stand up, but Viper refused. Instead, Viper’s hands clamped down hard on his shoulders, keeping him hovering awkwardly over his commanding officer. “Sir, I don't understand, what’re you—”_

_“You remember what I said about my project?” Viper’s eyes peered intently into his, sharp even after the crash. He’d often said that Viper’s thousand yard stare was what had earned him his callsign, and being on the receiving end of it was as intimidating as seeing a MiG up close sometimes. “About what it’s for?”_

_Was this a trick question? “To — to end wars, right?”_

_“Yeah. But the wars, they’re bigger than you know.” Viper tried to sit up but failed, falling back to the ground with a painful-sounding cough. “Damn it. This isn’t how I wanted to tell you, kid, but my name is not Mike Metcalf. My real name is Mar-Vell, and I come from a planet called Hala.”_

_It took him several precious seconds to come up with a reply. “I would say that you’re delusional, but we just got shot down by a spaceship and your blood is blue.”_

_Viper laughed, and it sounded just as painful as that cough. “Listen,” he said. “I spent twenty-five years on this planet helping fight a shameful war, and I’d rather die than help the enemy another second. Now get the hell out of here before you give me any more regrets.” Viper took his hand tightly. “Remember the coordinates, kid. You’ve got to save them without me.”_

_That was too much to process at once. “I — what? Save who? How?”_

_Viper ignored his questions and — his jaw dropped — pulled a gun out of his flight suit. He sat up, aiming it directly at the engine that was glowing with a pale blue light. “And now I’ve got to blow up this thing before they find it—”_

_Before he could pull the trigger, a green bolt of energy came shooting through the air and went directly through his heart. Viper collapsed back onto the ground, staring sightlessly up at the sky, and moved no more._

_“NO!”_

_Infuriated, he grabbed the gun out of Viper’s hand and aimed it in the direction of the attacker. His hands were shaking with rage, and his gaze kept flickering back to the other man’s body. Dead. Viper was dead. This couldn’t be real. This had to be a dream._

_Eventually, a shape appeared from the clouds of ash and dust: a man who looked to be in his late thirties, with short brown hair and a strange green and black uniform. The affable smile he was wearing did not go well with the gun he held in his left hand. “Put the gun down,” he said, like this was all one big joke. “We have no interest in hurting you.”_

_All of the fear and adrenaline and fury he felt churning within him made him snap. “Really?” His grip on the gun did not waver. “Because all of the shooting kinda gave me the wrong impression!”_

_Green Suit didn’t dignify that with a response. “Hand over the energy core and no one else will get hurt.”_

_“What energy core?”_

_Green Suit’s affable attitude disappeared instantly, replaced by irritation. “This is a waste of time.” He brought his remaining hand up to his ear and tapped it twice. “Minn-Erva, shoot him.”_

_“Wait!” Green Suit looked back up at him. He gestured towards the engine of the plane, which was still glowing. This was probably the stupidest, most reckless idea he’d ever had — including the 4G inverted dive and his stunt during the Layton rescue — but it had to be done. It was what Viper would have wanted him to do. “You mean that energy core?”_

_Green Suit’s expression turned horrified. “NO!”_

_But it was too late. He aimed the gun at the engine and fired._

_Immediately, the engine exploded into a wave of blue and orange-tinted energy, causing him and Green Suit to be thrown backwards. But all of the energy was spiraling directly at him. Directly into him. Choking the air out of his lungs, freezing his blood even as a scorching, painful heat spread across every inch of his body._

_All around him, rocks were turning to dust, trees were disintegrating. The water in the lake was churning to a boil. He was suspended in the air, glowing brighter than a supernova. His hands were tingling, sparking with energy the same color as the flames around him, and his body was now prickling furiously like thousands of tiny needles were forcing their way out of his skin from the inside. It hurt worse than anything he’d ever experienced — this was going to kill him, but he didn’t want to die, not yet, not when he still hadn’t done what Viper had asked of him, not when he hadn’t said goodbye to—_

_The world exploded, and then he knew no more._

_(Little did he know that a hundred feet away, there was a conversation occurring that would change the course of his life forever._

_“Yon-Rogg, he’s still moving. Permission to fire?”_

_“Hold your fire, Minn-Erva.”_

_“Why? There’s nothing left. The core’s been destroyed.”_

_“No. He absorbed its power. He’s coming with us.”)_

* * *

The thing about memories is that they never really disappeared. Not really. They can be buried, swept under a metaphorical rug in the mind, but they never go away. And no matter how long it takes, when they come back, they have the potential to change everything. To turn entire worlds upside down.

Chell stumbles out of the room on unsteady legs, staggering out of Kazansky’s house and into the backyard. It’s fenced off so no one can look in, and empty except for the porch on the back of the house and a lone tree growing in the corner. The perfect place for someone to be alone and gather thoughts that desperately needed to be gathered.

He isn’t Kree. He’s a Terran. He’s a human, not an alien, and Yon-Rogg had stolen him. Yon-Rogg had killed Mar-Vell and he had stolen Chell away from his home, away from his friends and his family. _And he lied to me. He lied to me about everything._

“Everything,” he says numbly. He feels like he’s going to throw up, and when he looks down he half expects to still see Viper’s blood on his hands. Stars, there’s so much blood on his hands. “Everything they told me was a lie.”

“Now you understand.”

Chell’s head snaps up so fast that his vision blurs. “What?” he demands of Talos, who’s standing on the porch with Fury and Norex and Kazansky, looking as though the weight of the galaxy has just dropped onto his shoulders. “What do I understand now?”

“Yon-Rogg killed Mar-Vell,” Talos says. “The man you knew as Viper. Because Mar-Vell found out that he was on the wrong side of an unjust war.”

His heart stops cold as the implications of Talos's words hit him. Seeing all of that had been one thing, but hearing it… “No.” He takes a step backward, shaking his head fervently. This can’t be true. “No. You’re all — your people are terrorists! You kill innocents; I saw the ruins on Torfa!”

“Ruins that the Kree are responsible for,” Talos says. Weary, but also cautious, like he’s explained this a thousand times before but never to someone willing to listen. “My people lived as refugees on Torfa. Homeless, ever since we resisted Kree rule and they destroyed our planet.”

The mission to Torfa. Yon-Rogg’s upper lip curling in disgust. Bron-Char and Att-Lass’s eager grins. _For the good of all Kree._ The blood, the screams. It had been a massacre.

Talos is speaking again, and Chell forces himself to listen even though the enormity of everything he had witnessed — everything he had done — threatens to tear him to shreds. “Now the handful of us that are left will be slaughtered next, unless you help me finish what Mar-Vell started. The coordinates you found would’ve powered a lightspeed ship capable of carrying us to safety. To a new home, where the Kree could never reach us. Mar-Vell wanted you to help us find the core.”

 _Remember the coordinates, kid. You’ve got to save them without me._ “I already destroyed the core.”

“No, you destroyed the engine. The core that powered it is in a remote location, but if you help us decode those coordinates, we can find it.” Talos moves forward, stopping a few feet away from Chell, like he’s afraid that Chell will hurt him if he comes any closer. “You can help us find it.”

He can’t. Stars help him, he _can’t._ Everything he’s ever known has been twisted inside out and upside down, and he has no idea what to believe anymore. “You’ll just use it to destroy us.”

“We just want a home.” Several months ago, his squadron had captured a high-ranking Skrull and brought her to Hala to interrogate her for information. She’d spent the entire time claiming to know nothing, begging and pleading for mercy, and Yon-Rogg had lost his patience and ordered Chell to shoot her in the head. Talos sounds the same as that Skrull had, and it makes Chell sick to his stomach. “You and I lost everything at the hands of the Kree. Can’t you see it now? You’re not one of them.”

“You don’t know me,” he snaps. He feels like his skin is fissuring, crackling apart under the pressure of the emotions and the memories raging within him. “You have no idea who I am. _I_ don’t even know who the hell I am!”

And then suddenly Kazansky is off the porch, striding across the lawn and stopping directly in front of him. “You are Maverick Mitchell,” he says, and the name sounds so _right_ that it makes Chell’s breath catch. “You’re a pilot; a naval aviator. My wingman. My best friend.” He inhales sharply, his eyes flickering away for the briefest of seconds before he meets Chell’s gaze again. “You’re smart. You’re funny. You’re reckless, and impulsive, and a huge pain in the ass. And you are the strongest person I know, with or without those superpowers.” His voice is firm, brooking no argument. “You hear me?”

Chell’s vision swims with tears, and the lump in his throat makes it impossible to speak, to tell Kazansky what those words mean to him. He settles instead for crossing the distance between them and throwing his arms around Kazansky in a fierce hug.

At first Kazansky doesn’t move, just steps back from the force of the added weight, but then his arms slowly come around Chell, anchoring him to the world again. “It’s okay,” he says, and Chell can no longer hold back his tears. “You’re okay. I’ve got you.”

* * *

His name is Maverick Mitchell.

Peter Matthew Mitchell, callsign Maverick. (Here he had gone on thinking Fury was strange for having three names and he technically has four.) He was a lieutenant commander in the United States Navy. He was a fighter pilot; a naval aviator. He had a life here, with friends and family and a good job, and the Kree had taken him. Wiped away all of his memories, hollowed him out and made him a pawn in their war.

That night, while tossing and turning and staring up at the ceiling in the living room, he starts to remember. It comes slow, in disjointed fragments. His mother. His father. Elementary school. High school. TOPGUN. Goose. Carole and Bradley, and Viper, and Charlie.

But Kazansky is nowhere in his head, and he’s the one that Chell — no, Maverick, his name is _Maverick_ — wants to remember the most. He wants to remember the scenes from the photographs, the feeling of Kazansky’s arm around his shoulders, the sound of his laugh. The taste of his kisses.

He closes his eyes, trying once again to picture that moment he’d glimpsed on Talos’s ship. They’d been alone, sequestered in a dark room. Standing close to each other, so close that he’d been worried Kazansky would hear his heart trying to jackhammer out of his chest. And then there’d been that laugh, that fond, exasperated laugh, and Kazansky had kissed him. Pulled him closer. And Maverick had responded, of course he had, he’d wanted it for so long, and when he’d pulled back, Kazansky’s name had been on his lips, his _name—_

His eyes shoot open.

Ten seconds later he’s off the couch and down the hall, stopping in front of a familiar door. His hand is poised to knock when the door suddenly swings open, and only his improved reflexes keep him from smacking his head against Kazansky’s chest.

“What the hell?” Kazansky startles backwards. Maverick is suddenly very aware of the fact that he is in his boxers and nothing else — and so is Kazansky — and he swallows hard. “Hey.” His voice goes soft, concerned. “Hey, what’s the matter? Are you alright?”

Maverick fights the urge to laugh out loud, not quite succeeding. “I’m fine,” he says. “I’m fine, Ice.”

Kazansky goes very still. For a hysterical split second Maverick thinks that maybe he remembered wrong, maybe that’s not his name after all, but then Kazansky whispers, in a halting voice, “How much do you remember?”

He feels like he can’t get enough air. “Not everything,” he says. Still, if he remembered the name, then the rest will surely come in time. “But you…you kissed me. And I kissed you back. I think I…” His throat closes up, and he looks away. “I think I might have been in love with you.” _I think I still am._

The silence lasts for what feels like an eternity, long enough for the universe to expand, collapse, and burst outward again. Then there's a hand on his face, cupping his jaw, making him look back up.

Ice is trembling, all coolness and composure gone, all of his barriers down. “Mav,” he breathes. He says the name (his name, he knows that now) just like he had in the garage that afternoon. Like a prayer. Like a lifeline. “Can I—”

“Yes.” The affirmation escapes before Ice can even finish his sentence. The wanting for the man before him clenches around his stomach and his heart, straining up his spine, urging him forward. “Yes. _Please.”_

Ice kisses him, and whatever Maverick had felt in that memory is a mere shadow compared to how he feels now. This kiss is desperate, hard and wanting, and it makes him feel like he’s swallowed fire — in a good way, somehow. Part of him recognizes the irony of someone with the callsign Iceman being able to kiss with such fire, but the rest of him isn’t surprised, not really. Ice has always been warm with him.

Eventually they break apart for air, and Maverick is about to go right back in for more when he notices the way Ice is looking at him, like he’s some sort of miracle, and something about it makes his throat constrict again. “Hey,” he whispers. “You good?”

The laugh that startles out of him is incredulous, but there’s still that note of fond exasperation in it that Maverick remembers so well. “Yeah,” Ice says. “You?”

“Yeah,” Maverick says, which is probably the biggest understatement of all time. He’s more than good, better than good, and he will continue to be as long as he gets to do that again. “Yeah, Ice, I’m good.”

“Good,” Ice says, and then he kisses him again.

Maverick responds at once, arching upward into the kiss, and it’s even more desperate this time, hotter, possessive, practically blistering the inside of his mouth. He’s on his tiptoes, his arms looped around Ice's neck. Ice is cradling the back of Maverick’s head, running his fingers through his hair, and when Ice’s other arm comes around him and pulls him even closer, Maverick could have wept at the sensation. Being held like this, being kissed like this: nothing had ever felt so good.

Despite all of the jokes he’d made to Minn-Erva and the others, he’d never wanted someone like this back on Hala, not with such desperate desire that it made his heart stutter and his thoughts derail. He wonders now if that had been his body’s way of telling him not to bother. That there would never be anyone else for him but Ice.

They’ve moved out of the hall and into the bedroom, his back pressed flat against the mattress. Ice is on top of him, kissing him over and over again, stealing the air from his lungs just like he had all those years ago, and it’s so good. So starsdamned good. There’s a lifetime’s worth of hunger rocketing through his veins, making his heart hammer against his ribs, setting his nerve endings alight in a way that even flying never could.

Their hands are wandering all over each other, reacquainting themselves with old territory, exploring the new, and Ice’s hands have just reached the waistband of Maverick’s boxers when he pulls back, hesitates. “Mav, do you—”

“Yes.” Stars, yes. He does. Anything Ice wants to do to him, he can take it. “Show me…show me what I’ve missed, Ice. Please.”

And Ice’s eyes darken at the sound.

His hands return to Maverick’s body, and all thoughts of Hala and the past and the mission they have to depart for tomorrow rapidly leave his mind, chased away by a blissful now.

* * *

There had been a rhythm to all of this back on Hala, Maverick thinks later, a song and dance with very specific steps. He’d see someone attractive, they’d size each other up, they’d go somewhere private to fuck, and then it’d be over. Done. Most of the time it had happened so quickly that it had felt less like sex and more like a business transaction. No feelings involved. It was safer that way anyways.

This isn’t anything like that.

Ice unravels him slowly, exploring every inch of him, kissing him like he might die for every second they’re apart. Even after all this time Ice knows and remembers exactly what Maverick likes — things that Maverick hadn’t even remembered liking until Ice had done them to him — and when he’s not sure, he asks. He always asks. It’s rough and gentle in equal parts, too many sensations to name buzzing like photon blasts beneath his skin, and when Maverick comes undone completely, it’s like stars being born in the night.

Even when it’s over, when they’re both left spent and gasping, they can’t stop touching each other. Maverick traces his fingers over the muscles in Ice’s arms, the flat plane of Ice’s stomach, the curve of Ice's hips, trying to memorize everything. Ice in turn rests his hand over Maverick’s wrist, drawing small circles over his carotid artery with his thumb, as if he’s reassuring himself that Maverick is really there.

The fact that Ice had seen the damage he could do, knew what he was capable of, and still wanted to touch him feels like something out of a dream. What had he done to deserve that? What had he ever done to deserve someone like Thomas Kazansky?

“Hey.” Ice’s hand nudges against his, lacing their fingers together. “What’s on your mind?”

Maverick wishes he were smart enough to say something smooth, like Att-Lass or Minn-Erva would if they were in his place, but what comes out instead is, “You.”

He’s expecting Ice to roll his eyes, but Ice just laughs. “Funny,” he says, and he brings Maverick’s hand to his mouth, kissing his knuckles. “You’re on my mind too.”

A smile spreads across his face, unbidden. So that’s what this is supposed to feel like, he thinks. Being happy. Being with someone for real.

Tentatively, he reaches out to touch Ice’s face. Brushes the pad of his thumb over the angles of his cheekbones, the freckle near his jaw, the soft scratchiness of stubble. He can feel Ice’s eyes on him the whole time — striking blue eyes that are, like the rest of him, impossibly beautiful. He’s so starsdamned beautiful that it makes Maverick’s heart feel like it’s going to give out.

“So,” Ice finally says. “You remember me.”

Maverick’s lips twitch. “I think so, yeah.”

Ice rolls his eyes. “Smartass,” he mutters, but his smile belies any annoyance he might feel. “What I meant was…when did — how did you remember? You said earlier that it came in flashes.”

“It does.” Maverick retracts his hand from Ice’s face — not because he wants to, but because he doesn’t want to get distracted in the middle of his explanation. “I mean, earlier it was just random flashes that didn’t make any sense. Ever since I heard the audio from the black box, there have been more flashes; clearer ones, somehow. Like I can actually understand what I’m remembering.”

“What did you remember before?”

Maverick breathes out. “Planes,” he says. “Flying. I dreamt of flying, a lot, back on Hala. Viper, but I didn’t know who he was. Just that I respected him. Uh. Singing.” He blushes. “I was singing this one song to impress a girl, but I have no idea why.”

Ice stifles a laugh into the palm of his hand. “Jesus,” he says. “Of course you’d remember that. Did she have blonde hair and green eyes?” At Maverick’s nod, Ice laughs again. “That was our teacher, back at TOPGUN. Charlie Blackwood.”

“Charlie,” Maverick says. He remembers her: she’d been beautiful, and strong, and ambitious. They’d argued a lot, and she’d left him — for a job opportunity, maybe? “Yeah, I…I remember her too. So why was I singing?”

“Hell if I know. That was just your style — you picked everyone up with some dramatic routine back then.”

Maverick raises his eyebrows. “Is that how I picked you up?”

“No.” Interestingly enough, two spots of red appear high on Ice’s cheeks, and he ducks his head. “You weren’t dramatic. You…you crept up on me.”

The softness of the admission makes Maverick’s lungs constrict. “Yeah, well.” He shrugs, tries for a smile. “You crept up on me too.”

Ice’s smile is like sunshine. For a second, Maverick wonders if Ice would have said anything about their past relationship had Maverick not remembered him, and then he decides it doesn’t matter. The point is they can be like this with each other again, and Maverick wouldn’t trade it for anything.

Then he remembers he technically hasn’t finished answering Ice’s question. “Oh, uh. I remember Goose. He and I flew together, right?”

“Yeah. Yeah, you did.” Ice’s smile has faded into something more cautious. “He was your RIO. Your Radar Intercept Officer.”

“Right. And he…” He remembers screams, and falling, and Goose’s lifeless body in his arms, staring sightlessly up at the sky, and he swallows hard. “I killed him, didn’t I.” His voice is quiet, barely in one piece. “It was my fault.”

Ice shakes his head once, firmly. He reaches out and brushes his hand against the side of Maverick’s face. “No,” he says. “It was an accident, Mav. It wasn’t your fault.”

Maverick doesn’t believe him, not really, but he nods and changes the subject anyway. “I remembered you,” he says. “You kissed me.”

“I did.”

“And I kissed you back.”

“You did.”

“So you and I, we were…” Maverick breaks off, frustrated, because every word that the Kree have for this is wrong. Matched, partnered, bound: those are all so technical, so empty. “We were…together?”

“Yeah,” Ice says. He seems perfectly calm, like this is something he talks about every day of the week, but Maverick notices that his shoulders have tensed almost imperceptibly, like he’s afraid that Maverick won’t like that answer. “Yeah, we were together.”

“Oh.” That’s all he can think of to say, just ‘oh.’ “How long?”

“About six months.” Ice adjusts his position, propping himself up on one elbow, and Maverick does the same. “We were friends for a couple years before that.”

“And we met at TOPGUN.” Even as Maverick says it, he remembers something else: Ice in his dress whites, his hair spiked up, wearing a grin shining with the promise of trouble… “You were flirting with me.”

Ice goes red. “I was _not.”_

“Really.” A slow grin spreads across his face. “So when you got up close to me like this…” He moves closer so they’re nose to nose. “And asked me if I’d figured out who the best pilot was, what was that?”

The look Ice gives him could melt paint. “Intimidation.”

“Whatever you say.”

Quick as a flash, Ice is on top of him, straddling him, pinning him to the mattress by his wrists. “What, Maverick,” he purrs, “you don’t think I’m intimidating?”

Maverick’s more aroused than intimidated, personally, and he’s pretty sure that Ice can tell. “Nah,” he manages. “In fact, you’re not really my type.”

“Is that so.”

“Mmhmm.”

Ice leans close, his lips brushing against Maverick’s briefly before he pulls away again. Maverick lifts his head up, trying to reach Ice, but Ice just laughs. “I don’t know,” he teases. “I think I might be your type.”

“Come over here and find out.”

Ice smirks. “Ask me nicely and I will.”

 _Smug bastard,_ Maverick thinks, and he’s about to say exactly that when Ice rocks forward against him in a way that seems deliberately calculated to torture him, and what comes out instead is a gasped, breathy, “Please.”

Ice’s eyes darken, but he still doesn’t move, and Maverick is ready to amend that _please_ to _goddamnit please just fucking kiss me already_ when miracle of miracles, Ice does.

It’s soft at first, almost tentative, but the hesitancy gives way to urgency, and then the kiss deepens, Maverick’s tongue slipping into Ice’s mouth to taste him. Ice releases his grip on Maverick’s wrists, and Maverick immediately reaches up to run a hand through Ice’s hair, cupping Ice’s jaw so they can kiss better.

With some maneuvering they find a position that suits them both. Ice shifts down, pressing a line of kisses to Maverick’s jaw, sucking at the thin skin near his throat, and then venturing even lower. Maverick’s stomach contracts in anticipation, and when Ice’s mouth closes over his dick, which is already stiff and leaking, it feels so good that Maverick arches off the mattress just to get closer to Ice, to fuck the inside of his mouth.

Maverick’s head tips back, his hands clutching at Ice’s hair, a rough, strangled noise coming from deep in his throat. His mouth, his tongue — _fuck._ Ice knows exactly what he’s doing, the smug bastard, he knows exactly what this is doing to him. The pleasure is so intense that all coherent thought leaves his head, everything fading except Ice Ice _Ice,_ and then he comes so hard that he actually sees stars.

Ice goes to move off him, and Maverick’s brain might be soft around the edges from that blowjob but he can still tell that Ice is hard. “Hang on,” he pants. “Hang on, I got this. I’ve got you.”

Admittedly, it’s been a while since he’s done this, but it’s like flying; once you learn how, you never really forget. Ice’s head is buried in the crook of Maverick’s neck, and the soft, hungry noises he’s making while Maverick strokes his dick is almost enough to get Maverick hard all over again. Ice is moving faster now, thrusting against Maverick’s hand, groaning, _“God,_ Mav,” and a few seconds later he comes, stifling a choked, hoarse noise into Maverick’s collarbone.

It’s quiet in the room for a while after that, the only sound coming from the two of them catching their breath. Ice shifts off him, returning to his side of the bed, but he’s still in Maverick’s periphery, close enough to touch.

“So.” Ice looks over at him, and Maverick offers up his most charming smile. “I think you might be my type too.”

Ice snorts. “Good,” he says wryly. “I’d have hated to have sucked your dick for nothing.”

“That would’ve been tragic.”

“Mmhmm.”

Maverick moves closer, already sick of the distance between them, infinitesimal as it is. He curls up next to Ice, rests his head against Ice’s shoulder, and Ice puts an arm around him like it’s second nature, holding Maverick like he never wants to let him go.

“Ice.”

“Yeah?”

“After the accident, did you…” Maverick hesitates. He’d been gone for six years and this is none of his business, but he needs to know. He has to ask. “Have you — I mean, was there anyone—”

“No.”

He lets out a breath he hadn’t even realized he’d been holding. “Never?”

“I haven’t been celibate for the last six years, if that’s what you’re asking, but…” Ice’s voice trails off, and he shakes his head. “No. There hasn’t been anyone else serious.” Then, softer, “There was never anyone else for me but you.”

The answer guts him so badly that for a second he can’t even speak. “Me either,” he whispers. He can’t get the words out right, no words can encapsulate the emotions swirling inside of him, but he’s determined to try. “Even back on Hala, I never — there was never anyone like you. You were the only one for me, Ice. Always.”

He’s close enough that he can feel rather than hear Ice’s sharp inhale, the way Ice’s arm tightens around him. “Good,” he says. The note of relief in his voice is poorly disguised. “That’s…good to know.”

Maverick maneuvers himself up to kiss Ice again. Short, brief, but still a conversation; somehow, all the important things manage to get said. He can feel the burn of exhaustion trying to pull him under — it’s been one hell of a day, and tomorrow will be even longer — but he can’t let himself drift off. Not yet. “Come with me, tomorrow,” he says. “To Mar-Vell’s laboratory.”

Ice raises his eyebrows. “Talos’s science guy got their ship working?”

“Few more modifications and he should have it.”

“That’s reassuring coming from the guy who couldn’t figure out that the lab was actually in space.”

“Everyone’s got their strengths and weaknesses.”

That makes Ice laugh. “So,” he says, turning onto his side so he can look Maverick in the eye. “Your plan is to leave the atmosphere in a craft not designed for the journey, and you anticipate hostile encounters with a technologically superior foreign enemy. Correct?”

“Yeah.” Maverick shrugs. “And I could use a wingman.”

He’s not sure what possessed him to say that, other than the fact that he’d heard Ice use that word earlier that evening. When Ice’s eyes go wide, he wonders if it had been the wrong thing to say, but then Ice kisses him so hard that it takes Maverick’s breath away, and Maverick thinks he would do well to listen to his instincts more often. “Okay.”

“What — really? Just like that?”

“Just like that,” Ice confirms. He nudges Maverick’s knee, his smirk utterly irreverent (and unfairly charming). “Besides, someone’s gotta help Agent Fury keep you out of trouble.”

“And you think you’re the right man for the job.”

“I think I’ve got all of the necessary qualifications.”

“You sound awfully sure about that,” Maverick says, just to be difficult.

In response, Ice tilts Maverick’s face up with one hand and kisses him again, slowly, carefully, and every single thing in his body — his skin, his collarbone, the hollow backs of his knees — fills up with light. “Yeah,” he says, a smile curving his mouth. “I’m pretty sure.”

Maverick wants to say something smart in response to that, but what comes out instead is a yawn, and his face burns red. “Sorry,” he mutters. “It’s…been a long day.”

“Yeah, no shit.”

Maverick isn’t sure what he’s supposed to do next — usually whoever he’s sleeping with has kicked him out of their quarters by now. But then Ice says, “Come here,” and he’s turning Maverick over so his back is pressed up against Ice’s chest, and Ice’s arm comes around him to hold him close, and there are no words to describe how good it all feels.

“Go to sleep,” Ice murmurs, pressing a kiss to his shoulder, but Maverick isn’t awake long enough to hear the whole suggestion.

* * *

It’s a slow awakening, gentle, easing him into consciousness with a quiet touch. It starts with a subtle awareness of warmth and pressure, of another body next to him, and the events of the previous day return to him in bits and pieces as he wakes. Meeting Fury. Going to Miramar. Learning about the true nature of the Kree-Skrull war. Planning to travel to Mar-Vell’s laboratory. Finding Ice again.

He’d turned over in the middle of the night, apparently, because when he opens his eyes he finds himself facing Ice’s chest. Ice is still asleep, the planes of his face relaxed as he breathes in and out steadily, and Maverick thinks (not for the first time) that he’s never seen anyone more beautiful.

Ice must feel him staring because he starts to stir, and then his eyes open. Oddly enough, the smile that curves his mouth is more wistful than happy. “Mav.”

Maverick bites the inside of his cheek to keep himself from grinning like a lovestruck idiot. “Hey, Ice.”

“I miss you.”

His stomach swoops like he’d missed a step going down the stairs. “What’re you talking about? I’m right here.”

Ice’s brows furrow, and his smile fades into a frown. Hesitantly, he retracts his arm from where it had been draped over Maverick’s waist and pokes Maverick in the shoulder — and then immediately flinches back so hard that he nearly launches himself off the bed.

“Ice!” Alarmed, Maverick sits up straight. “Are you okay? What’s the matter?”

“Nothing, nothing, I’m fine, I just…” Ice clears his throat. He’d caught himself on the nightstand, balanced half on the bed and half off, and he’s staring at Maverick like he can’t quite believe what he’s seeing. “I thought you were a dream.”

For a second Maverick thinks he might cry, but he forces it back. “Well,” he says, trying to keep his tone light, “I’m not.”

“Yeah, I can see that.”

Maverick holds out his hand, and Ice takes it, letting himself be pulled fully back onto the bed — and then a little bit further, right on top of Maverick. Ice opens his mouth, presumably to protest, but Maverick cuts him off with a kiss.

He can feel Ice’s smile against his lips before he hears it in his voice. “Forward, aren’t you.”

“Shut up, Kazansky.”

The next several minutes pass in a haze of wandering hands and slow, lingering kisses. He’d never spent a morning like this with anyone on Hala, but he thinks that even if he had, it wouldn’t have even remotely held up in comparison to the bliss he’s feeling right now.

The mood eventually tapers off, fading into a comfortable lull, and both of them are content to stay curled up against each other and catch their breath. Ice is half on top of him, his head resting on Maverick’s shoulder, and Maverick reaches around him to run a hand through Ice’s hair. He remembers that Ice likes that. “So,” he says. “Still think I’m a dream?”

He feels the answering shake of Ice’s laugh. “Nah. I’m pretty sure you’re real.”

“Good.” He lets some humor slide into his voice. “I’d have hated to have kissed you for nothing.”

“You’re hilarious.”

“Yeah, I know.”

From down the hall comes a smashing noise, followed by a hushed argument. It sounds like either Fury or Talos and Norex (his self-proclaimed science guy) had broken something and were trying to rectify the problem.

“You and your friends,” Ice mutters. He rises from his position on top of Maverick and shifts back onto his side of the bed. “I’m going to go take a shower. Mind checking to make sure they aren’t going to burn my house down?”

Part of him does mind, actually, and would rather stay in Ice’s bed (preferably with Ice) for the foreseeable future, but that would be courting disaster in a crowded house. “Yeah, sure,” he agrees. “Though I think Talos and Norex are too scared of Chewie to mess anything up on purpose.”

“Seriously, what is it with them and Chewie? The scariest thing she’s ever done is wander into my room and climb on the bed while I was sleeping.”

“Good thing she didn’t do that last night.”

Ice makes a noise of agreement before climbing out of bed, heading over to the dresser. He rummages through one of the drawers for a few seconds before turning around and tossing a bundle of cloth at Maverick, who catches it one-handed. It consists of a pair of boxers and a worn white T-shirt, with letters that have long since faded stenciled into it. 

“Your old stuff,” Ice says by way of explanation. “Figured you might not want to parade around naked in front of the Skrull and Agent Fury.”

“Why, is that what you’re planning on doing?”

Ice looks down at himself, like he’s just realized he’s not wearing a stitch of clothing either, and he’s smirking when he meets Maverick’s eyes again. “Don’t worry. This show’s only for you.”

Maverick’s mouth goes dry. “Good to know,” he says. He’s relieved that his voice comes out somewhat steady.

Ice slings a towel over his shoulder and heads to the adjoining bathroom. He turns around once he reaches the door, and his smirk, if possible, has only gotten wider. “I’ll see you later.”

Maverick watches him go. Yeah, he would.

* * *

Despite Ice’s premonition of Fury and Talos and Norex burning the house down, Maverick enters the kitchen to find it as unscathed as he’d left it. Fury’s at the stove making pancakes, and he’s dressed in the same clothes he’d worn yesterday. “Took the liberty of making breakfast,” he says by way of greeting. “Since apparently the Skrull only bother eating once a month.”

“Once every lunar cycle,” Maverick corrects. “Where are they, anyway?”

“In the backyard. They’ve got a cloaking device up over their ship, and Talos is helping Norex fix something with the artificial gravity. I sent Chewie to keep an eye on them.”

Maverick snorts. “Good plan.”

“Glad it’s got your approval,” Fury says. “Where’s Kazansky, by the way?”

“In the shower,” Maverick says, and then wishes he could bite his tongue. He’d told himself while changing in Ice’s bedroom that he would play this whole thing casual, and so far he’s failing miserably. “Uh. I think.” He gestures at himself awkwardly. “I, uh. He gave me these. Said they were mine from the last time I stayed over.” _Great, Mav. Real slick._ “From before the accident, I mean.”

But all Fury does is shrug and say, “That’s nice of him to do.” He nods at the coffeemaker. “Want some coffee?”

Did Fury actually believe him? “Sure,” he says cautiously. It’s a different model than the one he remembers Ice having, but it’s easy enough to figure out. 

“So,” Fury says once Maverick has lifted the cup to his mouth. “How was the pull-out?”

The swallow of coffee doesn’t make it all the way down his throat, instead spluttering onto the kitchen floor in a wide ungraceful arc. Coughing hard enough to dislodge a lung, he forces out a strangled, _“What?”_

“The pull-out,” Fury says. He’s smirking like the cat that ate not only one canary but the whole flock. Thank all of the stars Talos and his science guy are still outside. “The couch. Was it comfortable?”

“Uh huh.” Maverick feels his face burning. “Yeah, it was great.”

“I bet.” Fury’s voice is all too knowing. He returns to the stove like nothing had happened at all, and then says, almost casually, “Nice love bite, by the way.”

It takes every ounce of willpower that Maverick possesses not to reach up and slap his hand over what must be the mother of all hickeys on his neck. _Damn_ Thomas Kazansky and his stupid perfect mouth. That son of a bitch was probably in the shower smirking about this right now. 

And then the worry sets in, because all jokes aside, he remembers there had been a reason why he and Ice had to keep their relationship a secret before the accident, and six years might be a long time but it’s probably not long enough to change a country’s worldview completely. “Look,” he begins, but Fury cuts him off.

“Hey,” he says. “I’m just teasing; it’s all good. Besides…” He takes a sip from his own cup of coffee. “I could tell there was something between you two from the start. Neither of you could stop looking at each other.”

He blushes redder, even though at this point he figured that wasn’t physically possible. “Yeah, well.” He ducks his head, tracing the rim of his coffee cup with his thumb. “He’s nice to look at.”

“Good kisser too?”

“You have no idea.”

Fury guffaws, and Maverick can’t hold back a grin. He feels like he’s smiled more with Ice and Fury in the last two days than he had on Hala in the last two years. “Good for you, Maverick.”

“Thanks, Fury.”

* * *

By that evening, they’re ready to take off. Norex had elected to stay behind on Earth and try to buy Maverick and the others some time, so only Maverick, Talos, Ice, and Fury will be making the trip to Mar-Vell’s laboratory. The ship’s about the size of a Kree quadjumper and has the same controls, so Maverick flies it, and Ice joins him in the cockpit. Fury and Talos occupy the backseats, and Talos spends most of their ascent into the sky staring uncomfortably at the cat purring in Fury’s lap. “Did you have to bring that thing?”

“Our little alliance with you is tenuous at best,” Fury says. “And as long as she continues to freak you out…” He picks up Chewie and brandishes her at Talos, who jerks backwards in his seat. “Then yeah, I’ll bring her wherever we’re going. And I’m gonna keep giving her all the love and hugs she needs. Isn’t that right, Chewie?”

Out of the corner of his eye, Maverick notices Ice trying and failing to stifle his laughter into the palm of his hand, and it makes him smile. “Hey, play nice back there,” he says. “Fasten your seatbelts; we’re going for a ride.”

He pushes the throttle forward, and the ship climbs further up, going so quickly that gravity shoves them harder into their seats. His ears pop due to the change in atmosphere, and the sky around them morphs from blue to dark blue to inky black in a matter of seconds. Everything is shaking like it's going to come apart at any moment, and his teeth keep clacking together.

“Hey.” Fury’s voice wafts over from the backseat. “Is this space turbulence supposed to be happening?”

“Yep,” Maverick says, lying through his teeth. “Hang on a second.”

He switches the engines back and banks the ship so they’re not flying directly upwards anymore. Inside, everything not nailed down to the floor begins floating. A couple of pens from the console drift off into the air, followed by Maverick’s sunglasses and Chewie, who eagerly grabs onto Fury’s extended arm for balance. Ice’s expression is so soft and full of wonder at their surroundings that Maverick falls in love with him all over again.

Then Ice reaches out to flick one of the switches on his side, and gravity turns on again inside the ship again. Maverick forces himself to focus on the mission at hand. “Alright,” he says. He temporarily cuts the engines and pushes one of the buttons on the console. “Locking in coordinate grid.”

But something must have gone wrong, because there’s nothing outside the ship, nothing but the stars sprinkled like salt against an inky black tablecloth and Earth far below them. Talos comes over to stand behind Maverick’s seat, gripping it hard enough to tear the fabric. “It’s here,” he says. “It has to be here.”

“Well, is it in front of all of that nothing or behind it?”

Fury had likely meant it as a sarcastic comment, but that gives Maverick an idea. He pulls out the communicator in his uniform and types something into it. If there really is something behind all of that nothing, it’s worth a shot.

 _“Decloaking activated.”_

Suddenly, a bright light appears from the empty space, spreading out and over to reveal a Kree Imperial Cruiser. Mar-Vell’s laboratory.

Maverick flies the ship into the docking port on the side of the cruiser, and the four of them (five counting Chewie, who seems excited just to be there) disembark and begin walking through the corridors. Talos leads the way, his head snapping from side to side at every small noise, and Maverick walks directly behind him.

They end up in a giant room that looks like it’s spent the last six years being used for storage. Dusty boxes and crates line the walls, along with glowing machines and reactors. While Talos is examining what looks to be a pinball machine, Chewie makes a beeline for the largest reactor in the room, which appears to be powered by a small glowing white cube the size of a small alarm clock.

“Is that it?” Ice asks. “The core?”

Maverick nods. “I think so,” he says. “In his notes Mar-Vell called it the Tesseract.”

He takes the core from its position in the reactor, and he can feel the hum of its energy in the palm of his hand. Ice holds out an empty red white and blue lunchbox to him, and Maverick places the Tesseract inside of it, snapping the lid shut.

Then he notices where Ice had gotten the lunchbox from, and his brows furrow. The tables nearest the router are covered in scratch paper and blueprints and half-open notebooks, along with dolls with bright hair and action figures and tiny toy cars. “Weird,” he says, not to anyone in particular. “What was Mar-Vell doing with all of this stuff?”

Fury clears his throat, which makes both Ice and Maverick look up. He gestures at the table nearest him, on which rests a coffee cup with steam spiraling out of it. But that’s not possible — no one had come in or out of this laboratory in the last six years, not since Mar-Vell had died. Right?

Ice sums it up for all of them. “We’re not alone.”

The words have scarcely left Ice’s mouth when Talos opens his. At first Maverick thinks that Talos is singing, but that’s not it: it’s a cry for others, a haunting, longing melody. Out of the shadows, one by one, come more Skrull. Some old, some young, all of whom are dressed in worn, threadbare clothes. But Talos only has eyes for one of them: a Skrull woman in a black jumpsuit who looks as though she’s seen a ghost.

“Talos,” the Skrull woman whispers, and one second they’re separated and the next they’re in each other’s arms, Talos murmuring the woman’s name — Soren, Maverick thinks he’d said — like a prayer. “Oh, Talos.”

“He didn’t come here for the Tesseract,” Fury says quietly, just as Maverick has reached the same conclusion himself. Ice takes Maverick’s hand in his, squeezing it tightly.

Talos must have asked something, because Soren pulls back and gives a quick nod. She turns slightly, gesturing at the doorway behind her, and out of the shadows comes a tiny Skrull girl of about six or seven. Talos kneels down to get a better look at her, but she looks away, hiding her face in Soren’s hip. “It’s alright,” he says, his voice barely steady. “Do you remember me, Niamh?”

The child — Niamh — looks up at him, her brow furrowed questioningly. “Ahda?”

“Yes.” Now Talos’s voice breaks, and he takes the little girl into his arms, both of them clutching each other like they never want to let go. “Yes, Niamh. It’s me.”

“We didn’t know what to do,” Soren says. It comes out in a spill, like she can’t hold the words back any longer. “Mar-Vell warned us not to send a signal for any reason or the Kree would find us.”

Talos rises, Niamh still in his arms, and leans forward so his forehead rests against Soren’s. “You did the right thing, my love.”

Maverick feels like he’s intruding on something intimate and personal, and he’s about to suggest that he and Ice and Fury give Talos and his family a few moments alone when Soren suddenly releases a gasp that’s more of a strangled shriek and staggers backward, hiding behind Talos. The other Skrull are clearly frightened as well, and Maverick doesn’t understand why until Talos pulls Soren close again and says, “It’s alright, it’s alright. He’s a friend.”

Guilt and shame crawl up his throat, and they taste like acid on his tongue. Not wanting to frighten the Skrull anymore than he already has, he slowly moves forward, stopping a few feet away from Soren and Talos and Niamh. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he says.

“He led me to you,” Talos says to Soren, who relaxes infinitesimally. Niamh still stares fearfully at Maverick like she’s afraid he’ll attack her — or can she even see him beyond the Star Force uniform he’s wearing?

“I’m so sorry,” he whispers. Tears well up in his eyes. “I…I didn’t know.”

“This is war, Maverick,” Talos says softly, and Maverick turns to look at him. “My hands are filthy from it too. But we’re here now. You found my family.” He inclines his head — a gesture of respect among the Skrull — and Maverick does the same. “Thank you.”

“Fraternizing with the enemy, Chell?”

Maverick’s blood goes cold. Several of the Skrull let out small shrieks, and others clutch each other. Two seem to be considering fainting. Their look of terror is unanimous.

Yon-Rogg has just strolled through the southside doors like he owns the place, Minn-Erva, Korath, Att-Lass, and Bron-Char beside him. They're accompanied by ten more Kree soldiers that Maverick does not recognize, each one wearing the insignia of an Accuser. Fury draws his gun, but Minn-Erva already has hers pointed directly at him. When she gestures for him to drop it, he raises his hands in reluctant surrender and returns the gun to its holster. Chewie’s circling Ice and Fury, hissing at any of the Kree who come too close.

Talos forces a crying Niamh into Soren’s arms and positions his wife and daughter behind him. “You can see they’re not soldiers,” he says, struggling to keep his voice steady. “Let them go. You can have me.”

Yon-Rogg ignores him in favor of moving towards Maverick, stopping directly in front of him. “And just when I thought you could sink no lower,” he says. His upper lip curls in disgust. “You’re a disgrace to your uniform.”

His blood, once frozen, now boils with rage. “You lied to me,” he snarls. “You lied to me about everything!”

Maverick charges Yon-Rogg, his hands alight with energy, but Yon-Rogg easily moves out of the way. They exchange punches and kicks, but this isn’t like in the training center; Yon-Rogg is not holding back now. He summons his pistol to his hand, and when Maverick comes at him again, he uses it to backhand Maverick across the face so hard that his entire world explodes.

“Maverick!”

_“Mav!”_

Maverick lands hard on the ground, his head spinning from the force of the blow. He tastes blood in his mouth. Minn-Erva’s moved closer and has her rifle trained on him, and Yon-Rogg is kneeling next to him now. If he squints, he can just make out Korath and Bron-Char preventing Ice and Fury from moving toward him.

“They got in his head,” Minn-Erva declares. Bitch. “Just like we thought.”

“Worry not,” Yon-Rogg says back. He’s got a different weapon trained on Maverick now, a wave of blue light emanating from it and keeping him in place like a tractor beam. His voice is grim, determined. “We’ll take him in for reconditioning, and everything will be as it should.”

All the air leaves his lungs at once. “What?”

“The Supreme Intelligence will set you straight.” Yon-Rogg looks down at him, sneering like Maverick is something he found stuck to the bottom of his boot. It is truly astounding that Maverick ever looked up to him or wanted to impress him. “You’ll have no memory of the time you spent on C-53, or what you believe about the Skrull. Everything will be as it was. As it should be.” His cold smile sends shivers down Maverick’s spine. “And once that’s done, I’m sure you’ll be happy to dispose of your so-called friends for the good of all Kree.”

The butt of Minn-Erva’s rifle comes crashing down on his head, and Ice’s scream is the last thing Maverick hears before everything goes black.


	4. iv.

The world around him seems to go on forever in an endless white nothingness, with no sky or land or horizon in sight. The only landmark of any kind is a sleek wooden desk, papers stacked in neat piles on its surface, and the man sitting behind it. He’s wearing a beige uniform with multi-colored bars on the breast and gold pins on the collar, and when he looks up, Maverick's heart misses a beat. Viper.

No, not Viper. Maverick has to remind himself of that. This is not the man he had looked up to back on Earth and regarded almost as a second father. This is the Supreme Intelligence trying to manipulate him, and he won’t let himself be manipulated anymore.

Still. If his first time communing with the Supreme Intelligence had been awkward, doing so now that he knows exactly whose form it was taking is almost unbearably painful. Especially when it opens its mouth and begins to speak. “There he is,” the Intelligence says, smiling. “Guess your trip to C-53 ended up jogging your memory, huh?” It stands up and gestures at itself. “Love the uniform, by the way. It flatters my figure, don't you think?”

Maverick is not in the mood for small talk. “Let me out.”

The Supreme Intelligence shakes its head. “Sorry, kid,” it says, almost managing to sound apologetic. “No can do.”

His hands curl into fists, his fingernails biting into his palms hard enough to hurt. He thinks of Ice and Fury and Talos and the Skrull, utterly defenseless now that he’s been incapacitated, and his rage threatens to make him shake. “If you hurt them,” he says dangerously. “If you hurt any of them, I swear to God I will burn you to the ground.”

The Supreme Intelligence laughs, and the sound grates on his nerves like nails on a chalkboard. “With what, exactly?” It leans against the desk like it has all the time in the world. In fact, it looks oddly bored. “Your powers came from us.”

“You didn’t give me these powers,” he snaps. “The blast did.”

“And yet you’ve never had the strength to control them on your own.”

Having had enough, Maverick hurls a photon blast directly at the Supreme Intelligence, but it blocks the blast with an almost lazy flick of its wrist; the energy is sent hurtling back right at Maverick, who does not manage to dodge in time. If this hadn’t been a simulation, it would have killed him for sure. As things stood, it just sent him crashing to the ground, his chest burning from pain.

“You did good, kid,” says Viper — no, not Viper, damn it, the Supreme Intelligence — as Maverick gets back to his feet, breathing heavily. It’s smiling at Maverick the way Viper always used to, wry and a little fond, and it hurts worse than any blow he’s ever been dealt to know that none of this is real. “Thanks to you, those insidious shapeshifters will threaten our borders no more.”

That, however, is not Viper at all, and it gives Maverick the strength to stand up straighter. To keep fighting. “I used to believe your lies,” he says. “But the Skrull are just fighting for a home. If you want to destroy them because they won’t submit to your rule, then you’ll have to destroy me too.”

For a moment the Supreme Intelligence actually looks confused, like it hadn’t expected Maverick to say that. Or maybe it’s just taken aback by the vehemence with which he’d said it. “We found you,” it says. “We embraced you as our own.”

 _“You stole me!”_ Anger burns bright within him like a supernova, torching every other emotion in its path. “You stole me from my home. My family. My friends.”

A grin slowly spreads across its face — an evil, sadistic grin, utterly devoid of warmth and humor. “Your friends,” it repeats. “Yes, I remember them. They were so much _fun_ to erase from your mind the first time.” The Supreme Intelligence paces around Maverick, who longs to wipe that grin off its face, but finds that he has been frozen in place and can’t do anything but watch. “I remember them all. Your flight partner. Your ex-girlfriend. Even the form I’m currently wearing. Oh, and the cute one. The one you had such _strong_ feelings for. What was his name again? Iceman?”

The mere mention of Ice’s name makes Maverick’s vision white out from rage, and the next thing he knows he’s tackled the Supreme Intelligence to the ground, hauling his fist back to punch it in the mouth. But the Intelligence catches his hand before it even makes contact, and uses it to throw Maverick across the emptiness and into a wall. Maverick thrashes hard, gnashing his teeth, wanting to tear the Supreme Intelligence apart with his bare hands, but his limbs remain stuck fast.

The Supreme Intelligence shakes its head. “It’s cute how hard you try,” it says, amused. “Remember, Chell. Without us, you’re weak. Flawed. Nothing.” 

As if summoned on command, a series of images appear out of nowhere to barrage him, playing before his eyes in full color and sound.

_“It’s with our deepest apologies that we regret to inform you that Lieutenant Matthew Mitchell is a casualty of war,” says a man in uniform, and Mary Mitchell sobs on the floor while Pete stands behind her, gritting his teeth hard to keep his own tears from falling because he’s gotta stay strong for his mom, he’s got to—_

_“I’m sorry, Pete,” says the nurse, placing a cool hand on his shoulder. He’s still clinging to his mother, who stares without seeing at the ceiling. “I’m so sorry, honey. She’s gone.”_

_“Look, son, it’s nothing against you.” The man from the admissions board shifts uncomfortably in his seat. “You have the potential to be one hell of a pilot, but…well, your family name isn’t exactly the best in the Navy, if you understand my drift.”_

_“Maverick, you just did an incredibly brave thing.” The bald man looks up from his paperwork, his mouth twisted into a scowl around the cigar he’s chomping on. “But what you should have done was_ **_land your plane!_ ** _Son, your ego is writing checks your body can’t cash. You’ve been busted, you’ve lost your qualifications as section leader three times — put in hack twice by me — with a history of high-speed passes over five air control towers and one admiral’s daughter!”_

_“Sir, let go of him,” the man says, but Maverick refuses, holding on even tighter to Goose. He’s got Goose’s eyes shielded from the spray of the ocean because Goose always complains about getting water in his eyes, and Maverick has failed him enough today, he can still do this much. “You’ve got to let him go, sir.”_

_“You didn’t learn a damn thing, did you? Except to quit.” Charlie flings the words at him like bullets, but he’s beyond the point where they would have any impact. “You’ve got that maneuver down real well.” She stands up from the bar counter, pausing only to give him a look of pity and disgust. “So long, Pete Mitchell.”_

_“And now I’ve got to blow up this thing before they find it—” But a green bolt of energy comes shooting through the air before Viper can pull the trigger, going straight through Viper’s heart, and Maverick screams even though he knows it won’t do any good, Viper is dead, he’s dead, he’s_ dead—

“See?” The Supreme Intelligence’s voice is low, an insidious whisper. “Without us, you’re only human. But we made you better once. We can make you better again.”

As the Supreme Intelligence speaks, the world around him begins slipping away, disappearing beneath waves of blankness, and he stops thrashing, slowly goes still. Already he’s forgetting why he’s supposed to be fighting, like the details of a long ago dream. Why should he resist anyway?

_No. No, you have to hang on, you have to…hang on…_

“On Hala,” says the Supreme Intelligence, its voice reverberating as though rising from the bottom of a well. “You were reborn. Your name is Chell, and you fight for the good of all Kree.”

 _For the good of all Kree,_ his mind echoes dutifully, though it’s drowned out by another voice (one that he barely recognizes as his own) screaming at him, _No, that’s not right, don’t listen to it, that’s not who you are._

Then who is he?

_“You’re a pilot; a naval aviator. My wingman. My best friend.”_

Something flickers in the recesses of his mind — the barest, faintest spark of memory.

_“You’re smart. You’re funny. You’re reckless, and impulsive, and a huge pain in the ass. And you are the strongest person I know, with or without those superpowers. You hear me?”_

More memories suddenly burst forward, flooding his mind with sound and color, beating the waves of blankness back. Zooming through the sky to avoid the Kree, his stomach swooping and Viper ordering him to fly faster. Shooting the engine. Saving that woman in front of the clothing store. Escaping from the SHIELD agents at Miramar. Laughing with Fury in the Officers’ Club. Listening to Talos’s explanation of a war more complicated than it seemed. And Ice. Everywhere in his head is Ice. Ice’s laugh. Ice’s smile. Ice kissing him, holding him like he would never let him go.

And then it’s all gone, and whatever power had been keeping him pinned to the wall vanishes. He collapses onto the ground, gasping for air and thoroughly spent. Every muscle in his body aches, but his mind has never felt clearer.

“Rise.”

He rises. Keeps his head down.

“Good,” says the Supreme Intelligence. The note of cold triumph in its voice is clear. “State your name.”

Light flares from his fists, spreading up his arms all the way to his shoulders, across his entire body, and he meets the eyes of the Supreme Intelligence unflinchingly.

“My name,” he says, “is _Maverick.”_

He blasts the Supreme Intelligence across the room and into another wall, where it squirms and bucks in an effort to break free, its face a rictus of pain and confusion and horror. “Impossible,” it snarls. “That’s impossible!”

Maverick doesn’t know if the Supreme Intelligence is referring to his resistance to its mind control or the fact that he has full use of his powers now, and he doesn’t really give a damn. “You know,” he says casually. “I’ve been holding myself back this whole time — all because I wanted to impress you and Yon-Rogg, be the best Kree soldier I could be. But I’m not Kree. I’m _human.”_ A grin of his own tugs at his mouth, slow and dangerous. The Supreme Intelligence’s face goes pale. “And what happens…when I set myself free?”

Channeling all of the power he possesses, he rips the fabric of reality around him apart, and everything disappears.

* * *

“Chell. Verify, CTC-39.”

Every cell in Maverick’s body is screaming for him to blast Yon-Rogg to pieces, to eject him into space, but he forces himself to keep all the hatred out of his expression. He’s at a distinct disadvantage here — Yon-Rogg has a gun trained on him, he’s better at hand-to-hand combat, and (most importantly) likely knows where Ice and Fury and the Skrull are being kept. If he wants to save his friends, he’s going to have to play along.

So he blinks up at Yon-Rogg, adopting a confused, weary expression like someone waking up after a long sleep. “GRX-31-600,” he says tentatively. The wires that had wrapped around his body have now retracted into the glowing hexagon on the floor, and he stands up, his hand going up to rub at the back of his head (the spot where Minn-Erva had hit him with her rifle). “What happened? Where am I?”

Yon-Rogg’s expression gives nothing away. “What’s the last thing you remember?”

What had Yon-Rogg said? _‘You’ll have no memory of the time you spent on C-53, or what you believe about the Skrull.’_ “I — Torfa. We were on Torfa, weren’t we? To get Soh-Larr?” He hesitates, as if fearing the worst. “Did we get him?”

Yon-Rogg sizes him up, and whatever he finds in Maverick’s expression must convince him, because he holsters his pistol at his side. “No. You were kidnapped by the Skrull; we were all worried sick about you.” The words are too smooth, too polished, completely lacking in sincerity. Had Yon-Rogg always talked to him like this? “You were in their custody for the last two days.”

“Stars above.”

“That’s a word for it,” says Yon-Rogg. His smile is sharp enough to cut steel. “Feel up to helping us dispose of the dissidents?”

It might be a bit overkill, but he can’t resist. “Sure,” he says. His smile is just as sharp. “Anything for the good of all Kree.”

Yon-Rogg leads him out of the room and into an empty corridor. Bron-Char and Att-Lass have got their weapons trained on Ice and Fury, who are on their knees. Chewie had been muzzled and is now in a cage with bars made from energy instead of metal, and the lunchbox with the Tesseract rests next to it.

Ice notices Maverick first, and his entire body goes from tense to relieved to tense again in a matter of seconds. “Maverick?”

Maverick forces himself to meet Ice’s eyes, keeping his expression cold and uncaring. “Who the hell is Maverick?”

The reaction is immediate. Ice’s face drains of color, all but literally, like he had been cut open and his veins emptied, leaving him bloodless white under his tan. His pupils have dilated to pinpoints. “No,” he says. “No, no — what did you do to him?” His voice grows louder, more desperate with every word, and it takes all of Maverick’s self-control to not end the ruse then and there. “What did you do to him? _What did you do?”_

Att-Lass brings his pistol down hard against Ice’s face, and Ice’s head snaps to the side from the force of the blow. “Shut up, Terran scum,” he snaps. Maverick grits his teeth to keep himself from killing Att-Lass on the spot. Just a few more seconds. 

Yon-Rogg approaches Ice, who tries to look away, but Att-Lass grabs him by the hair and forces his head backwards so he meets Yon-Rogg’s gaze, his eyes full of fire. “You Terrans,” he says scornfully. “Always so pathetic, so emotional—”

Ice spits in his face, his teeth bared in a snarl. “Tell your men to get their fucking hands off me and you’ll see just how pathetic I am.”

Yon-Rogg wipes off the saliva, cleaning his hands thoroughly against the fabric of his jumpsuit as he gets to his feet again. “Chell,” he says, and Maverick automatically snaps to attention. “Kill them.”

Att-Lass and Bron-Char get behind Ice and Fury, holding them both up, and Yon-Rogg hands Maverick his pistol. Ice’s gaze is somewhere to the right of Maverick’s head, like he can’t even stand to look at him. Fury, however, meets Maverick’s gaze head on. He doesn’t look angry or upset; his brow is furrowed in confusion. He can tell something is up.

“Chell,” Yon-Rogg snaps. “Kill the dissidents. Do it _now._ That’s an order.”

“Yes, Commander,” Maverick says, and he shoots Bron-Char in the head.

Bron-Char collapses, and the roar of rage has barely escaped Att-Lass’s mouth when Maverick shoots him in the head too. Whirling on his heel, he faces Yon-Rogg, who stares at him, thunderstruck. “Chell,” he says dangerously. “What the _hell_ did you just do?”

“Sorry.” Maverick’s grin is wolfish, utterly unapologetic. “I missed.”

He shoves his hands out, and the photon blast that shoots out of them sends Yon-Rogg flying across the hall. He hits his head hard against the wall and slumps to the floor, where he lies unmoving.

Maverick turns back around to face Ice and Fury, unable to hide his utter elation that his plan had actually worked, but his joy fades a little when he notices how they’re both staring at him. Ice in particular looks like he’s come face to face with a ghost.

Suddenly wishing he’d prepared a little better, he manages a sheepish grin. “So,” he says. “What do you think? Better con than in _The Sting?”_

Fury laughs out loud, his entire face lighting up. “My friend,” he says fondly, “you could put Paul Newman to shame any day.”

Maverick helps Fury up, and Fury claps him on the back before going over to try and free Chewie from her cage. Ice has gotten to his feet too, and he approaches Maverick slowly, like he’s afraid Maverick will disappear if he makes any sudden movements. “Mav?”

“Yeah.” His throat is suddenly tight. “Yeah, Ice, it’s me.”

There’s barely a foot of distance between them now. For a second Maverick thinks that Ice is going to kiss him, but then he hauls off and punches Maverick hard in the shoulder.

 _“Ow!_ Ice, what the hell?!”

“You scared the shit out of me, Maverick! What the hell were you thinking?”

“I had to make sure their guard was down.” In hindsight, it _might_ not have been the best idea, but since it worked he’s not about to complain. “I figured if Yon-Rogg and the others thought the Supreme Intelligence actually reconditioned me then I could free you and incapacitate them in one move.”

“You goddamn _idiot.”_ Ice looks like he wants to punch him again, but instead he just hugs him so hard that Maverick feels his ribs creak. Maverick winces involuntarily, and Ice pulls away at once, examining him with sharp eyes and careful hands. “Are you okay? Did they hurt you?”

“I’m fine,” Maverick reassures him, and it’s true. He’s got full use of his powers and his friends are alive, and he’s never felt better. Then he notices the blood trickling from a cut on Ice’s temple, the bruise already blossoming on his cheek from when Att-Lass had pistol-whipped him, and a burst of white-hot anger spikes through him. “They hurt you.”

“I’ve had worse shaving. I’m okay, Mav. I promise.”

“Good,” Maverick says, and then grabs Ice by the collar of his shirt, pulls him close and kisses him. Ice kisses him back automatically, and it’s not like any kiss they’ve shared before; this is blissful oblivion, and Ice is the only real thing in the universe, one hand at the small of his back and the other running through his hair—

Fury clears his throat, and they break apart at once. Maverick’s face goes scarlet at the clear amusement in Fury’s eyes; Ice hides his embarrassment better, though the tips of his ears are bright red. “Hey,” he says pointedly. He’d freed Chewie while Ice and Maverick were talking, and even the cat is judging them from her position in Fury’s arms. “We still have to get out of here, remember?”

“Right.” Maverick coughs. “Sorry about that.” He looks over at Ice. “Uh. To be continued?”

Ice actually blushes, and it’s all Maverick can do to keep himself from kissing him again. “Sure.”

“Great.” Before he can humiliate himself any further, he goes over to pick up the lunch box that had been next to Chewie’s cage. “Here,” he says to Fury, forcing himself to get his mind back on the mission. “Take the Tesseract, leave the lunchbox.”

Fury’s eyebrows shoot up so high that they’re in danger of disappearing into his hairline. “I’m not touching that thing!”

“Fury, come on—”

“It’s alien tech, Maverick! What if it burns my hand off?”

“Well, I don’t have time to get you an oven mitt right now, so—”

Chewie suddenly launches herself out of Fury’s arms, landing gracefully on the floor. Giant tentacles emerge from inside her mouth, extending toward the Tesseract, which she then swallows whole before glancing up at the three of them as if to say _There, problem solved._

“Huh,” Maverick says once he’s regained the power of speech, because he has literally no goddamn clue what else to say. “So that’s what a Flerken is.”

Ice stares at Chewie like he’s never seen her before. “Seriously?” he demands of the cat, who licks her paw as though nothing had happened. Fury’s jaw is roughly at his knees. “You could do that _the entire goddamn time?”_

Maverick bends down to pick up Chewie. “I’m going to hand you over to Fury now,” he tells her. “I’m trusting you not to eat me. Or either of them.”

Chewie looks at him as if to say _don’t be stupid_ and lets herself be handed over to Fury, who holds her like he’s holding a nuclear bomb.

“Get the Skrull on the ship and go,” Maverick says. He tucks the now-empty lunchbox under his arm. “Take Chewie with you.”

“Wait, what about you?”

“I’ll buy you some time!”

He’s halfway down the corridor when he hears Ice call his name, and he turns around automatically. “Be careful, alright?”

Maverick winks at him. “You know me.”

* * *

Minn-Erva and Korath are still in the engine room with a handful of Accusers — the remaining ones must have been dispatched to guard the Skrull. All of them, however, wear identical expressions of loathing when they look down from the overhead corridor and see him standing on the ground. “Hey,” Maverick says. He holds up the lunchbox tauntingly. “Missing something?”

Korath draws his weapon first, and the others quickly follow suit. “I used to find you amusing,” he snaps. “Let’s put an end to this.”

“If you insist,” Maverick says, and shoots a photon blast up at the overpass, causing the metal to snap and all of the Kree to fall to the ground. It doesn’t incapacitate them, unfortunately, just pisses them off. But he’s got full use of his powers now, and he could take the galaxy on if he felt so inclined. He fastens the lunchbox to his belt and gets into a fighting stance. “Let’s fight.”

An Accuser comes sprinting at him, dual broadswords in hand, and Maverick blasts her into the wall. Another fires their blaster, and Maverick ducks under the energy bolt before sending one of his own right back at them. One of them, a tall, hulking man with muscles the size of car tires, decides to forgo weapons altogether and jumps him, trying to get his arms around Maverick’s neck. Maverick snaps his head back hard right as he elbows the man in the gut, and his next photon blast sends the man sailing across the room and through the jukebox in the corner. It had been such a powerful blast that Maverick had actually been knocked back a few feet, and his grin grows wider at the thought.

Roaring a battle cry, Korath jumps down from the remains of the metal overhead corridor, and Maverick jumps out of the way just in time — as a result, the laser lance only slices the foosball table in half, and not Maverick’s head from his body. Korath throws a punch at him, and Maverick catches it, using the momentum and his newfound strength to hurl Korath straight up in the air before leaping up and kicking him across the room.

Blaster bolts sail down on him like hailstones, and he ducks and rolls behind the pinball machine. Then, carefully taking aim, he fires across the room at Minn-Erva and two Accuser snipers. One of them goes down, another is taken out by Maverick’s next blast, but Minn-Erva keeps dodging. She aims her weapon at Maverick and fires, and Maverick climbs on top of the pinball machine and jumps off it, sailing through the air and landing right on top of her.

She bucks him off her and swings her rifle at him, but Maverick catches it in his hand. “You knew all along.” He cocks his head to the side. “Is that why nothing ever happened between us?”

“No,” Minn-Erva says, her teeth bared in a snarl. “I just never liked you.”

She pulls the trigger, but Maverick wrenches the rifle out of her grip and the blast goes high. Then he kicks her legs out from under her and brings the butt of the rifle down hard on her head, knocking her out instantly. “Oh well,” he says. “Your loss.”

Suddenly, someone picks him up from behind and hurls him against the reactor that had once held the Tesseract. His back smarts with pain — that’ll be bruised as hell tomorrow — but he gets back to his feet anyway. Korath is up again, blue blood trickling into his eyes from a long gash on his forehead, and he’s holding the lunchbox. He must have taken it off Maverick when he’d grabbed him by the waist.

Korath opens it, and his face falls almost comically fast. Maverick knows exactly what he’s seeing: an empty soup container where the Tesseract should be. “Where is it?” he snaps. “Where is the core?”

“You know, I could have sworn I put it in there,” Maverick says. Korath throws the lunchbox at Maverick, who easily dodges it and blasts Korath right through the remains of the pinball machine. He does not get up again.

With all of the enemy incapacitated, Maverick figures he’d given Fury and Ice enough time to locate the Skrull and free them, so he runs out of the room and down the corridor toward where they had docked the ship.

The sight that greets him is barely controlled chaos. The Skrull are running onto the ship, Ice and Fury and Talos providing cover fire with stolen blasters. Maverick fires blast after blast at the remaining Accusers — stars, there were so many of them; what had Yon-Rogg done, borrow the entire squadron from Ronan? Most of the Skrull are on the ship when one of the Accusers’ blasts actually lands, striking Talos hard in the chest.

Talos goes down, and Fury drags him back into the ship. Soren takes up Talos’s position and fires at the Accusers, her jaw set with anger and determination. The last Skrull climbs aboard, and Ice goes to push the button to bring the ramp up, but then he spots Maverick. Maverick can’t hear what he’s shouting over the remaining blaster fire, but he assumes it’s something like _Get on the ship, you idiot!_

He cups his hands over his mouth. “Get them out of here, Ice! I’ll catch up with you, I promise!”

Ice looks like he wants to argue, but the Accusers are gaining and they’re running out of time. He gives a tight nod and slams his hand against the button, and the ramp immediately goes up. Thirty seconds later, the engines come on — good, so he can fly the ship, that’s reassuring — and the ship blasts off, slicing through the air and disappearing into space like it had never been there at all.

Good. So they’re safe. Now he has to get the hell out of here. Maverick sends photon blast after photon blast at the Accusers, taking one down with every shot. Concentrating hard, he summons energy to his hands, crosses his wrists over his chest and yanks them apart. A wave of blue and orange-tinted energy spirals toward the Accusers in a tidal wave, knocking them all onto their backs. He’s never produced that much energy in one go before, and he’s starting to feel pretty good about his chances when something smacks him hard in the shoulder.

He’d been shot. Pain spirals from his shoulder, which has simultaneously gone numb with cold and scorching hot. Not fatal, he’ll live, but he’d been _shot,_ and it had been from the back. Who could have—

He jumps to his feet just as another blaster bolt sails past his head and fires a photon blast at Yon-Rogg, who inexplicably drops his weapon and runs away down the corridor.

_Oh no you don’t._

Maverick chases him down the halls, firing blast after blast. Yon-Rogg jumps into an escape pod — a Kree Cruiser built like a much smaller F-14 — and the glass canopy closes over him. Maverick jumps on the hood, his fist already glowing with energy, but then the Cruiser shoots out of the ship and into space. Maverick loses his balance and goes tumbling backwards, barely grabbing onto the wing in time. His helmet automatically materializes, which at least allows him to breathe, but since he’s dangling from the wing of a Kree Cruiser hurtling through space, breathing is the very last thing on his mind.

They’ve just entered the Earth’s atmosphere when Yon-Rogg veers hard right, and Maverick loses his grip on the wing completely. He’s falling, falling, falling through the sky just like he had less than forty-eight hours ago, but this time if he hits the ground he’s pretty sure the fall will kill him. And he can’t die yet, not when he doesn’t know if the Skrull are all alright, not when he’d promised Ice that he’d meet him back on Earth. He’s got to live — and, he realizes, he knows exactly how to do it.

He closes his eyes, and he sets himself free.

Power courses through his veins, through bone and muscle and sinew, and when Maverick opens his eyes, he’s not falling anymore. He’s glowing with blue and orange energy from head to toe, and he’s _flying,_ ascending through the sky like a bird — like an F-14, he thinks with a joyful laugh — and it feels _amazing._ He can soar and swoop and dive anywhere he wants to, going at speeds that make supersonic look slow, and it’s the best feeling in the world. Better than his dreams by a long shot.

He arcs up toward the Kree Cruiser in the distance, which is now firing at the Skrull ship that had just flown out of the nearby canyon, and he punches the Cruiser’s wing so hard that it bursts into flames. The Cruiser immediately goes into a downward spiral, descending to the ground in a whirl of flame and smoke, and Maverick flies down after it.

He lands hard on the ground right at the edge of the canyon, his entire body still glowing with light. Yon-Rogg’s ship had crash-landed about five hundred feet away from him, and Yon-Rogg is already clawing his way out of it. He looks like shit — he’s dripping with sweat, his hair is a mess, the sleeve of his uniform is torn and there’s a long cut dripping blue blood down the side of his face. But he looks no less determined and ready for a fight, and Maverick is ready for one too.

They circle each other, Yon-Rogg holding his pistol and Maverick’s hands alight with energy. Yon-Rogg stops moving once his back is to the canyon, and Maverick stops as well. The air between them is thrumming with tension.

Then Yon-Rogg tosses his pistol away. Maverick watches it land in a clump of dry grass twenty feet away, bemused but determined not to show it. This had to be some sort of trick, and he won’t let himself be manipulated this time.

“I’m so proud of you,” Yon-Rogg says. He’s smiling — not in amusement or a patronizing way, but a genuine smile. That’s new. “You’ve come a long way since I found you that day by the lake. But can you keep your emotions in check long enough to take me on? Or will it get the better of you, as always?” He gets into a fighting stance, his jaw set and his fists clenched in front of him. “I always told you you’ll be worthy the day you can knock me down as yourself. This is that moment. _This_ is that moment, Chell! So turn off the light show, and prove to me that—”

“Go fuck yourself,” Maverick says, and blasts him into the canyon.

Yon-Rogg is stirring feebly when Maverick finds him on the canyon floor. There’s a scorch mark the size of a fist — the exact size of Maverick’s fist, come to think of it — on his chest, which rises and falls weakly. His teeth are stained cobalt blue with blood. “I don't,” he says hoarsely, “I don't understand. You didn’t — why d-didn’t you fight me?”

He looks so pathetic staring up at him that for a moment, Maverick almost feels sorry for him.

But not quite.

In fact, not at all. Definitely not enough to regret his actions. Yon-Rogg had killed Mar-Vell, had hurt Ice and Fury, had stolen Maverick away from everything he had ever known. That’s inexcusable.

Maverick kneels down next to Yon-Rogg, wanting to be certain that the other man can hear him. “Because,” he says, each syllable as sharp as a knife, “I have _nothing_ to prove to you.”

He takes Yon-Rogg’s wrist, and Yon-Rogg tries to stop him but runs out of strength before he even lifts his own hand an inch off the ground. “What’re you gonna do, Chell?” His voice is slurred from the pain. “You gonna kill me?”

“No,” Maverick says shortly. He won’t. Mostly because he’s pretty sure Yon-Rogg will succumb to his injuries before he reaches his destination — and, though he wouldn’t admit it even at gunpoint, he doesn’t want Yon-Rogg’s blood on his hands. “I’m sending you back to Hala with a message.” He turns on Yon-Rogg’s communicator so it can record everything he’s about to say. “Tell the Supreme Intelligence that I’m going to end it. The war, the lies, everything.”

Yon-Rogg meets his eyes. “You can’t do this,” he says. “I won’t let you do this.”

Two days ago, Maverick would have heeded the warning. Now he just laughs. “You know,” he says. “I don't think you’re in much of a position to tell me to do anything.”

Still holding onto Yon-Rogg’s wrist, he flies up out of the canyon and back to the ground above, depositing Yon-Rogg back into the Kree Cruiser. He inputs the destination — ignoring Yon-Rogg’s look of loathing — and shuts the canopy, watching the ship fly off into the sky until he can’t see it anymore.

He keeps his chin up. The sun is rising.

* * *

Ice is on the porch when Maverick lands in his backyard an hour later, and the sight of him alive and well — if thoroughly exhausted — makes Maverick so relieved that his knees almost give out. Thank every last star. “Ice.”

Ice’s head snaps up. He spots Maverick standing in the middle of his backyard, and all of the tension he’d been carrying seems to leave his body in a whoosh of air. He jumps off the porch steps and runs to Maverick, taking him into his arms, and Maverick clings to him in turn. “Mav,” he whispers. He actually sounds like he’s on the verge of tears. “Jesus, Mav. Thank God you’re okay.”

Okay might be stretching it a bit far, since he had gotten shot — even if he’s pretty sure the wound is mostly superficial — and thrown around like a rag doll and hadn’t slept in almost twenty-four hours, but he doesn’t want Ice to let go of him yet, so he nods. “I’m okay,” he echoes. “I’m fine. Are you okay?”

“Yeah.” Maverick feels rather than sees Ice nod. “Yeah, I’m okay.”

“Talos? Fury?”

“Fury’s eye got scratched pretty badly, and Talos got shot, but Soren and one of the Skrull medics are looking after him. Both of them should be fine.” Ice breathes out again, and Maverick can feel Ice’s heart beating. Can feel both of their hearts beating, in sync with one another. “Hey. Listen.” Ice draws back, looking Maverick directly in the eye. “Knock it off with the heroic stunts, okay? I don't think my heart can take it anymore.”

Maverick wants to make a joke, but he’s so exhausted that he ends up being truthful instead. “Don’t worry,” he says. “I think I’m good for a while.”

“Good.”

They stand there for a while, just looking at each other. Ice’s hair is a mess, his clothes are grimy and torn, and his cut from earlier has been clumsily stitched up (probably by the same Skrull medic working on Talos), but at that moment he’s the most beautiful thing that Maverick’s ever seen.

“You know,” Maverick says, offering up his most winning smile. “I meant it earlier when I said ‘to be continued.’”

The corner of Ice’s mouth quirks upward. “Did you.”

“Yeah.” Maverick reaches out, tugs Ice over by his belt loop. “And I don’t know about you, but…I think now’s a pretty good time.”

“Really,” Ice says. Somehow he manages to sound simultaneously amused and unimpressed by Maverick’s blatant attempt at seduction. “There’s a government agent and fifty aliens in my house and you look like you're about to collapse from whatever injuries you’re not telling me about, and you want to kiss _now?”_

Damn. Maverick should have guessed Ice would figure that out. Still, he shrugs. “Why not?”

For a second Ice looks surprised, but then he just laughs. “Why not,” he repeats, shaking his head. “You romantic bastard.” And then Ice cups Maverick’s face in his hands and kisses him, long and slow and sweet.

And government agents and Skrull and space battle wounds aside, Maverick thinks, it had been worth the wait. Very, very worth it.

* * *

It takes sixteen hours after returning from space for Maverick to start feeling vaguely human again. Gynara, the Skrull medic, had disinfected and stitched up his blaster wound, which (thanks to the Kree blood running through his veins) will only take a few days to heal. Afterwards, he’d been so exhausted that all he’d had the strength to do was wash his face and kick his boots off before collapsing in Ice’s bed to sleep for the next twelve hours straight.

By the time he ventures out of the bedroom (clad in one of Ice’s shirts and an old pair of his pants), it’s evening again. Ice had ordered enough pizza to feed an army, and even though the Skrull only eat once every lunar cycle, they seem glad enough for any food that hadn’t come in an MRE package. Most of them sit around the house in small groups (in the living room, on the stairs, in the hallway) but Ice, Fury, Soren, Niamh and Talos are all sitting around the kitchen table discussing the day’s events, and Maverick pulls up a chair and joins them.

“I can’t believe you got into a dogfight with Minn-Erva and didn’t tell me,” Maverick says to Ice, talking around a mouthful of pizza. “Who’s the reckless one now?”

“Still you, you idiot,” Ice says. “And close your mouth when you eat.” Niamh stifles a giggle into the palm of her hand, and Ice winks at her like they’re sharing a secret. “Anyway, I’d say you arrived just in time.”

“That was some pretty nifty flying you did out there,” Fury adds, gesturing at Ice with his fork. He’s the only person that Maverick has ever seen eat pizza with utensils — he claims that he doesn’t like the smell of it on his hands, and Maverick is polite enough not to make fun of him for it. For now. “SHIELD could always use a pilot like you.”

“Thanks, but I think I’ll pass,” Ice says. “TOPGUN’s supposed to be moving to Nevada this summer, and I don't trust anyone else to look after the program at this point.”

“Well, if you ever get bored there, you know who to call.”

“Maybe,” Ice says. He takes a pull of his beer and smirks. “Provided you never call my flying _nifty_ again.” Fury holds up his hands in a gesture of surrender, and Maverick snorts. “How’s your eye, by the way?”

Fury’s hand ghosts over his left eye, which had been badly scratched by Chewie in the middle of their dogfight. “Getting better every second,” he deadpans. He sends a glare at Chewie, who’s curled up at Niamh’s feet and ignoring them in favor of the toy mouse she’s playing with. “I’ll take an apology at any time, you know.”

“Pretty sure she can’t actually do that,” Talos says.

“Oh, what would you know anyway,” Fury mutters, but his annoyance is clearly feigned. “So what’s the plan from here on out? I can work something out with SHIELD to find you and your family a safehouse on Earth, but you’re going to need an identity that wasn’t stolen from my boss.”

“Okay, first of all, I _borrowed_ his likeness. I’m no thief.”

“It’s a little like stealing, Talos,” Soren puts in.

Talos puts his hand over his heart. “Whose side are you on, my love?”

The conversation shifts to possible identities that Talos and the Skrull could take on in order to stay on Earth, but Maverick’s not paying attention. He knows from overhearing a conversation between Talos and Soren and Gynara earlier that there are still thousands of Skrull out there, scattered in small pockets throughout the galaxy. Just because he and Ice and Fury had saved these fifty didn’t mean that the Kree wouldn’t double their efforts to hunt down the hundreds that remained. Without someone to protect them, the Skrull would be doomed.

_Remember the coordinates, kid. You’ve got to save them without me._

“—come on, I loved sporting your boss’s beautiful blue eyes. Maverick, help me out here.”

Maverick looks up, grins like he’d been paying attention all along. “I’m with Fury here, sorry,” he says. “Besides, you’d give yourself away in ten seconds; you kept calling him Nicholas back at Miramar.”

“What is the _point_ of having more than one name if you don't use it?” Talos asks, sounding genuinely confused.

Maverick nods sagely. “Tell me about it.”

* * *

“So,” Fury says, and Maverick looks over at him. The two of them are alone in the kitchen, washing all of the dishes — and due to the sheer number of Skrull in the house, it’s a fairly large amount. “What’s up with you?”

“What makes you think something’s up? I’ve barely said anything.”

“Yeah, that’s my point.”

Damn. Maybe he’s easier to read than he’d previously thought. “Fair enough,” he says, this time quieter. He busies himself with drying the dish in his hand, trying to figure out how to breach the topic he’d been thinking about for the last two hours. “I’ve been thinking—”

“Dangerous habit,” Fury teases, but he relents when Maverick raises his eyebrows at him. “Alright. So you’ve been thinking. What about?”

“About,” Maverick says carefully, “maybe going with the Skrull when they leave. To protect them. To help them find a new home.”

There. He’d said it. He expects some sort of explosive reaction, but Fury doesn’t even look taken aback. He looks rather like he’d expected Maverick to say so all along. “Can’t say I’m surprised,” he says. “They need someone to protect them, and you’re definitely the right man for the job.”

“...you think so?”

Fury nudges his arm. “Definitely,” he says. “Though, well…you’ll be missed around here. By me. A lot.”

Maverick ducks his head to hide his smile. The fact that he’d miss Fury too — his first friend on Earth — goes without saying. At least for now. “Think you’ll miss me enough to do me a favor?”

“Depends on the favor,” Fury says. “But I think we can come to an arrangement.”

“I want you to keep the Tesseract on Earth," Maverick says. “Hidden.”

Fury glances over at him. “You sure that’s what Marvel would want?”

“Mar _-Vell_ _.”_ A smile tugs at the corner of his mouth. “It’s two words. Mar-Vell, not Marvel.”

“Marvel sounds a lot better to me,” Fury says. “You know, like the Marvelettes?” At Maverick’s obvious confusion, Fury grabs the scrubber brush from out of the sink and holds it up to his lips like a microphone. “‘Way _-ait_ _,_ wait a minute Mister Postman, way-ay-ay _-ait_ _,_ Mister Postman!’ Come on, it’s a classic! You can’t tell me you’ve never heard of that song.”

“Keep singing, maybe it’ll come back to me.” Fury laughs. While he’s finishing up scrubbing the dish in his hand, Maverick reaches into the pocket of his jeans and pulls out Fury’s pager. “Here.”

Fury takes it, clearly surprised. Considering Maverick had found it lodged underneath one of the seats in the Skrull ship, maybe he hadn’t wanted to see it again. “You fixed it?”

“I upgraded it,” Maverick corrects. Or rather Soren had, after he’d come up to her and Talos after dinner to explain his plan, but he had helped. “Range should be a couple galaxies at least.”

Fury studies it like he’s not sure what to make of it. “Your boyfriend get something similar?”

Maverick wants to delay this line of questioning by protesting the word ‘boyfriend,’ which doesn’t even remotely begin to describe what Ice means to him. Instead, he glances down at the soapy water in the sink. “I haven’t told him yet,” he says. He doesn’t need to see Fury’s expression to know that it’s not impressed. “I _know._ I know, Fury. I just…” _I don't want to see his face when I tell him that I’m leaving again._ “I haven’t found the right moment yet.”

“No time like the present,” Fury says. He tucks the pager into the pocket of his pants and gestures with his chin into the hallway. “He’s out on the porch. Go talk to him. I’ll finish up.”

Maverick’s mouth is suddenly very dry, but he manages a nod. “Thank you,” he says. Fury shrugs as if to say _don't mention it,_ and Maverick heads out toward the porch.

True to Fury’s word, Ice is sitting on the porch swing, one hand wrapped loosely around a bottle of beer. His feet are up on the small table in front of the swing, and he appears to be deep in conversation with Chewie, who peers at him intently like she can understand every word he’s saying. Maybe she can. After the previous evening he wouldn’t put it past her.

“I can’t believe I took care of you for six goddamn years and you never told me that you were an alien,” Ice is saying. “You know, I’m of a mind to never speak to you again.” Chewie meows mournfully, rubbing her head against Ice’s leg, and Ice rolls his eyes. “Fine, fine. I guess I forgive you.”

Just when he’d thought he couldn’t be more gone for Ice, he had to go and do something like this. “Hey.”

Ice looks up, and his smile widens. “Hey,” he says. “You want to sit down?”

“Yeah, sure.”

Maverick joins him, and he swears that Chewie shoots him an appraising look before she moves off the porch swing and curls up by the screen door.

They sit in comfortable silence for a while, listening to the water running in the kitchen, and the distant buzzing of cicadas, and the creaking noises of the Skrull settling down for the night. Sitting here with Ice, it’s good, relaxing, familiar — and yet there’s something missing. Something…

“When we did this before,” he says, and Ice looks over at him. “Wasn’t there…” He gestures, unsure of how to say it. “There was…a square thing? That played music?”

Ice laughs out loud. “Yeah,” he says, smiling with every part of his face. “The house came with a radio built into the wall. You always tuned it to some rock and roll station whenever you came over; you said that I didn’t have proper taste because I didn’t like Def Leppard or Bon Jovi.”

“No, I said you didn’t have proper taste because all you’d ever listen to was The Doors.” It comes out automatically, and he’s not sure where from, but he follows the memory further. “What was that one song you liked — da da da da da da-daaa-daaa, da da da da da da-daaa-daaa…”

“Light My Fire.”

Maverick snaps his fingers. “That’s it. That one was alright.”

“Ringing endorsement from someone who doesn’t even remember the words,” Ice says, clearly amused. “I’ll look for my cassettes in the morning. Maybe you’ll appreciate their songs more this time around.”

“Use the radio. Some station’s gotta be playing them now, right?”

“I can’t.”

Maverick frowns. “Why not?”

“It doesn’t work anymore. I…” Ice’s eyes flicker over to the wall, to the spot where the radio must have been, but he looks away again just as quickly. “It, uh. It broke. A few weeks after the accident.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.” Ice shrugs, tries to smile like it doesn’t matter, and it makes Maverick’s stomach ache like someone kicked him there with steel-toed boots. “It was a piece of shit anyway; played more static than music near the end. This one time—”

“I’m leaving.”

Maverick regrets it the second the words leave his mouth. He hadn’t meant to blurt it out like that — he’d wanted to ease into the conversation, go slow. But he’s Maverick Mitchell, and if there’s one thing he knows about himself, it’s that he only ever goes into conversations like these with his eyes shut and the gas pedal all the way down.

Ice’s eyebrows have gone up, but there’s no other indication that Maverick’s words had struck a blow. “Didn’t think my company was that unbearable.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“I know.”

Maverick opens his mouth, but then their eyes meet, and he realizes that Ice does know. He’d probably known this was coming the second Talos had started considering his options at the kitchen table. Of course he had. If Fury had figured it out, then of course Ice had too.

The silence stretches out, and every heartbeat seems to reverberate in his chest, leaving a frantic ache behind. It seems like every second they sit there he’s watching his entire relationship with Ice slip away: their first meeting at TOPGUN, and their slow progression to friendship, and the nights laughing and drinking and playing darts at the Officers’ Club, and teaching the next generation of pilots together, and the moment Maverick looked over at him and realized that he was in deeper than he’d ever imagined. Their first kiss. The first time they made love, and all the times after. All of it is disappearing into nothing, like sand getting swept away by a current.

“It’s not because of you,” Maverick says. He’s desperate to make Ice understand this. “You and Fury are the only ones who matter to me here. Nothing else — everything else is nothing.”

“Yeah.” The word comes out quiet, barely audible, and it makes Maverick feel like he’s been knifed in the ribs. “Yeah, I know.”

“I just…I owe it to Talos, Ice. To his family, to all the remaining Skrull. To help them find a new home — finish what Mar-Vell started.”

“I know, Mav.” It’s a little sharp, but it’s not completely undeserved. Then Ice sighs. “I figured you’d want to help them. You wouldn’t be you if you didn’t. I just…” His voice fades, and he looks down at his lap. “I don’t know. I was really hoping that maybe…maybe this time I could keep you.”

The blade digs in even further, and he looks away. “I’m sorry,” he manages, forcing the words out through the lump in his throat. It’s not enough and too much all at once, but it’s all he can think of to say.

“It’s okay.”

“No it’s not, Ice. I shouldn’t be — not when we just—” He can’t find the right words to express how sorry he feels that they’d just found each other and now he has to leave again. No, that’s not fair. He doesn’t have to. He’s _choosing_ to leave Ice, and even though he knows it’s for a good reason, it still makes him feel like his heart is splintering apart.

“Mav.” Ice’s voice is quiet. Too quiet. “Look at me.”

Maverick doesn’t answer. Doesn’t move. He can’t. If he does he might start crying and doesn’t know if he’ll ever stop.

“Maverick,” Ice says, and, well. Ice could have said his name in that voice and Maverick would have gone to the moon for him had he asked. So he looks up.

Ice meets his gaze head-on, and Maverick understands at that moment that even though Ice isn’t happy with this turn of events, even though he wants Maverick to stay just as much as Maverick himself wants to, he won’t try and talk Maverick out of his decision. Ice had accepted Maverick’s choice before it was even made, because Ice hadn’t expected anything less of him.

“Don’t be sorry,” Ice says. “It’s okay. I get it. Just…” He hesitates for the barest of seconds. “Let’s just…enjoy whatever time we have left together.” His voice goes small toward the end. “Alright?”

He swallows hard. Gives a tight nod. “Okay,” he whispers. “Alright.”

* * *

Seven days after Maverick arrives on Earth, it’s time for him to leave again.

The Skrull had left earlier that afternoon to get the Kree Imperial Cruiser that had served as Mar-Vell’s laboratory back in working order — and to dispose of the bodies of the Kree soldiers that were littered through most of it. Maverick had waited most of the day for Soren and Talos to send him a signal that they were ready for him to join them, and now that they are, he finds that he can’t make himself leave. Not yet.

Fury had stayed to see him off, and it’s him that Maverick has to say goodbye to first. Without Fury’s help, he never would have gotten to Miramar, never would have found Ice again. For that, he owes the man everything. “Thank you, Fury,” he says. He sticks out his hand, and Fury shakes it. “For everything.”

Fury manages a smile, even though his one remaining eye is tearing up. The other, still scratched beyond repair, is now hidden beneath a leather eyepatch. “Hey,” he says. “The next time you’re passing back through this galaxy, be sure to give a brother a shout.”

“Will do.”

Fury pulls him into a hug, clapping him on the back. “Good luck out there, Maverick.”

“Thanks, Fury.”

Maverick draws back from the hug after a few seconds, his eyes automatically going to the other man who had stayed to see him off. Who had been standing on the other side of the backyard for the last few minutes watching him and Fury say goodbye.

“I’ll give you two a minute together,” Fury says quietly, reading Maverick’s mind. Before Maverick can thank him, Fury goes back onto the porch to sit next to a snoozing Chewie, leaving Maverick alone with Ice.

Ice speaks first. “So,” he says. “You, uh. You changed the outfit.”

Maverick looks down at himself, as if just noticing the difference himself. With Niamh’s help, he’d changed the green of the suit to black, with white stripes and a red belt, boots, gloves and shoulders completing the look. “Yeah, well. Couldn’t exactly wear Kree colors anymore, so…” He manages an awkward laugh. “Do you like it?”

Ice’s face softens. “Yeah,” he says. “I do. I think it suits you.”

“Thanks.” Maverick struggles to keep his voice steady. They hadn’t even said goodbye to each other yet and his heart is already aching. “Hey, I — I got you something. A bit of a going-away present.”

Ice raises his eyebrows, but he accepts the object that Maverick places into the palm of his hand. It’s about the size of a watch, and Ice slides it over his wrist, tracing the blank face of it with his thumb. “What is it?”

“It’s a communicator,” Maverick says. “Skrull design, though, not Kree. Check it out, press the little button.” Ice obliges, and a miniature hologram of himself appears, hovering over Maverick’s wrist. When he presses the button again, the hologram disappears, and Maverick takes that as his cue to explain further. “Soren helped me modify the tech. No matter how far away I am, we can still talk. I’ll still be able to see you.” He pauses, trying to gauge Ice’s reaction. “I — what do you think?”

It takes a moment for Ice to reply. “I think it’s good,” he finally says. “It’s a good idea, and it’ll help.” He shifts forward, now standing close enough that their foreheads nearly touch, and lowers his voice so no one but Maverick can hear him. “Just don’t take six years to come back this time, alright?”

Maverick reaches up and traces the edge of Ice’s jaw, feather-light and gentle. Even with most of his memories back, he still has no idea what he had done to deserve Ice’s love, but he’s determined not to squander it. “I won’t,” he says, just as softly but no less serious. “I just got you back, Ice. I’d really have to be an idiot to give that up.”

“Yeah.” Ice’s laugh is wet. “You’re goddamn right you would.”

Maverick leans up, kisses Ice one last time. Tries to memorize the planes of Ice’s face, the feeling of Ice’s arms around him — even though there isn’t an inch of him that he doesn’t already know by heart. “I’ll come back,” he says. It’s a promise, one that he intends to keep, and from the way Ice nods, Maverick knows that Ice believes him.

He’s just started walking toward the center of the yard when Ice clears his throat. “Mav,” he says, and Maverick automatically stops, looks back. “Be careful. I hear it’s pretty dangerous out there.”

“Hey.” Maverick grins, unable to resist. “I am dangerous.”

Ice snorts, shaking his head, and Maverick would have to be blind to miss the fondness behind the motion. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I know you are.”

Maverick turns back, finishes walking into the center of the yard. His hands ignite with blue and orange energy, which spreads up his shoulders, down his legs, across his chest, his entire body glowing with light.

With the stars above him and his home around him, Maverick takes off into the sky.

This time, he doesn’t look back.


End file.
